Andrei Kaplan, a junior academic at a Slavic department with a career going nowhere answers the emergency call from your brother who has to leave Moscow to temporarily relocate in order to take care of their ailing grandmother. Born in Moscow but immigrated to the US during the Soviet Union as a small child, he never returned since. Dima, his self-made man of a brother, decided though to leave the capitalistic America for the adventures in wild capitalist post-Soviet Russia. Now he is in trouble and has to run for his safety to London and the grandmother needs a constant help for dealing with the progressive alienation brought by Alzheimer´s.
A Terrible Country - the country in cause is, obviously, Russia - by Keith Gessen is a tragi-comical story of finding oneself without necessarily looking for in an aimless academic environment undergoing the changes after the fall of the communism. Suddenly, the well funded ´Slavic Studies´ were becoming obsolete and the academics specialized in this domain so much encouraged during the Cold War - for all the political reasons of the time - had to reshuffle their academic repertoire. Andrei is not sure about what to do next, but going to Moscow and spending time with some funny socialist group October (as in the Great October Socialist Revolution), with a guest beautiful star Yulia as the woman muse, may inadvertely change his career path.
I´ve forgot how much I enjoy books set in the post-Soviet world, particularly when the characters are anti-establishment intellectuals. There is a certain irony that used to be the cream on the top of the Soviet dissident cake and it remains equally highly appreciated nowadays when, we all know how bad the situation in Russia is. At the time of the novel, Putin´s shadow was lingering outdoors.
Gessen - the brother of the brilliant analyst of the Russian politics and society Masha Gessen - has a relatively similar history with his character. Born in the Soviet Union, he left the country for America as he was 6 years old, as his Jewish family decided to leave. The tone of the book has sometimes a memorialistic tone, and knowing some details from the author´s life doesn´t make it easy to separate the voice of Kaplan to the author´s. This interposition may be confusing sometimes, at least at the beginning, but I suppose fiction and personal biography can go that close together.
The grandmother in her stubborn fragility and typical Jewish Soviet humour is one of the most sympathetic and spontaneously developped character in the book. Her mental confusion makes her so beautifully human that one may almost regret the news delivered in the last pages of the book.
A Terrible Country is an exercise in post-Soviet American-based literature. It introduces the returning immigrant but with such a laughable take that one may actually forgot how threatening Putin´s shadow got over the years. In a way, my literary heart was missing those confused immigrants and idealistic drunk idealists and anarchists of all colours.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
No comments:
Post a Comment