Back to Moscow

THE RARE NOVEL . . . A GENUINE EPIPHANY WHOLLY EARNED AND WHOLLY UNEXPECTED. WITH ITS FINAL GESTURE THE STORY REVEALS ITS TRUE SHAPE. IT’S AN ACT OF MAGIC SUCH A REVELATION AND ONE THAT I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT.―KEVIN BROCKMEIER AUTHOR OF THE ILLUMINATIONTuesday night: vodka and dancing. Wednesday morning: posing as an expert on Pushkin at the university. Thursday night: chasing girls and more vodka. Friday morning: a hungover tour of Gorky’s house.Martin a young doctoral student of literature comes to Moscow hoping to discover the country of Dostoyevsky Tolstoy and his beloved Chekhov. Instead he finds a city turned on its head where the grimmest vestiges of Soviet life exist side by side with the nonstop hedonism of the newly rich. Along with his hard-living expat friends Martin spends less time on his studies pursuing instead the Mysterious Russian Soul in the city’s unhinged nightlife scene.In quick-witted prose recalling the neurotic openheartedness of Ben Lerner and the whiskey-sour satire of Bret Easton Ellis Back to Moscow weaves an enthralling coming-of-age tale of debauchery and discovery carved from the corpse of the former USSR―an unforgettable and complexly crafted portrait of a chaotic metropolis storming into the twenty-first century.