Back to Moscow - Paperback

by Guillermo Erades (Author)

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.

Author Biography

GUILLERMO ERADES is the author of Back to Moscow. He was born in Malaga, Spain and has lived in Leeds, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Moscow, Berlin, Baghdad, and Brussels, where he is currently based.