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 ILLUMINATION

Tuesday 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.