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Riverhead
August 2014
On Sale: July 31, 2014
306 pages
ISBN: 1594632146
EAN: 9781594632143
Kindle: B00G3L7XBY
Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiction
A dazzling debut novel about a Russian immigrant family
living in Brooklyn and their struggle to learn the new rules
of the American Dream. In this account of two decades in the life of an immigrant
household, the fall of communism and the rise of
globalization are artfully reflected in the experience of a
single family. Ironies, subtle and glaring, are revealed:
the Nasmertovs left Odessa for Brighton Beach, Brooklyn,
with a huge sense of finality, only to find that the divide
between the old world and the new is not nearly as clear-cut
as they thought. The dissolution of the Soviet Union makes
returning just a matter of a plane ticket, and the
Russian-owned shops in their adopted neighborhood stock even
the most obscure comforts of home. Pursuing the American
Dream once meant giving up everything, but does the dream
still work if the past is always within reach? If the Nasmertov parents can afford only to look forward,
learning the rules of aspiration, the family’s youngest,
Frida, can only look back. In striking, arresting prose loaded with fresh and inventive
turns of phrase, Yelena Akhtiorskaya has written the first
great novel of Brighton Beach: a searing portrait of hope
and ambition, and a profound exploration of the power and
limits of language itself, its ability to make connections
across cultures and generations.
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