A Terrible Country
A Novel
-
-
3.7 • 51 Ratings
-
-
- $8.99
-
- $8.99
Publisher Description
“Hilarious. . . . To understand Russia, read A Terrible Country.”
—Time
"This artful and autumnal novel, published in high summer, is a gift to those who wish to receive it."
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
"Hilarious, heartbreaking . . . A Terrible Country may be one of the best books you'll read this year."
—Ann Levin, Associated Press
A New York Times Editors' Choice
Named a Best Book of 2018 by Bookforum, Nylon, Esquire, and Vulture
A literary triumph about Russia, family, love, and loyalty—from a founding editor of n+1 and the author of Raising Raffi
When Andrei Kaplan’s older brother Dima insists that Andrei return to Moscow to care for their ailing grandmother, Andrei must take stock of his life in New York. His girlfriend has stopped returning his text messages. His dissertation adviser is dubious about his job prospects. It’s the summer of 2008, and his bank account is running dangerously low. Perhaps a few months in Moscow are just what he needs. So Andrei sublets his room in Brooklyn, packs up his hockey stuff, and moves into the apartment that Stalin himself had given his grandmother, a woman who has outlived her husband and most of her friends. She survived the dark days of communism and witnessed Russia’s violent capitalist transformation, during which she lost her beloved dacha. She welcomes Andrei into her home, even if she can’t always remember who he is.
Andrei learns to navigate Putin’s Moscow, still the city of his birth, but with more expensive coffee. He looks after his elderly—but surprisingly sharp!—grandmother, finds a place to play hockey, a café to send emails, and eventually some friends, including a beautiful young activist named Yulia. Over the course of the year, his grandmother’s health declines and his feelings of dislocation from both Russia and America deepen. Andrei knows he must reckon with his future and make choices that will determine his life and fate. When he becomes entangled with a group of leftists, Andrei’s politics and his allegiances are tested, and he is forced to come to terms with the Russian society he was born into and the American one he has enjoyed since he was a kid.
A wise, sensitive novel about Russia, exile, family, love, history and fate, A Terrible County asks what you owe the place you were born, and what it owes you. Writing with grace and humor, Keith Gessen gives us a brilliant and mature novel that is sure to mark him as one of the most talented novelists of his generation.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Candid, eye-opening, and heartbreaking, Keith Gessen's novel follows a Russian-born American who returns to Moscow to care for his ailing grandmother. Educated but jobless, Andrei finds that social and political upheaval has turned his native land overwhelming, alien, and surreal. We were spellbound by Gessen's unpacking of the social intricacies of the new Moscow, as well as his representation of the insightful political debates among Andrei's leftist friends. Ultimately, Andrei’s journey becomes an in-depth analysis of what it means to be Russian under Vladimir Putin.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Gessen's exceptional and trenchant novel, floundering 30-something professor Andrei Kaplan flees from New York to Russia, the country of his birth, to reassess his future and take care of his ailing grandmother. Called abroad by his enterprising older brother, Dima, Andrei arrives in Moscow to find the city of his memory surreally changed, his 89-year-old grandmother's apartment one of the few spaces exempt from a partial Westernization. Andrei's early attempts to reorient himself to post-Soviet Russian society bring about considerable insight and humor getting rebuffed by a men's adult hockey league, getting pistol-whipped outside a nightclub leading him back to watching old Russian films with his grandmother. Eventually, though, Andrei carves out a place for himself among a group of leftists known as October, whose ranks include Yulia, a devout radical with whom Andrei embarks on a romantic relationship. Gessen (All the Sad Young Literary Men)meticulously forges these bonds before casting them in doubt, as Andrei's involvement in a protest complicates the new life he has built. While poised to critique Putin's Russia, this sharp, stellar novel becomes, by virtue of Andrei's ultimate self-interest, a subtle and incisive indictment of the American character.
Customer Reviews
A Terrible Country
Interesting and educational about everyday life in Moscow and Russia. Hard to get overly enthused about a novel that’s well written when the protagonist is largely pathetic.