Back to Moscow
A Novel
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Tuesday night: vodka and dancing at the Hungry Duck. Wednesday morning: posing as an expert on Pushkin at the university. Thursday night: more vodka and girl-chasing at Propaganda. Friday morning: a hungover tour of Gorky's house.
Martin came to Moscow at the turn of the millennium hoping to discover the country of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and his beloved Chekhov. Instead he found 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 and less time on his studies, choosing to learn about the Mysterious Russian Soul from the city's unhinged nightlife scene. But as Martin's research becomes a quest for existential meaning, love affairs and literature lead to the same hard-won lessons. Russians know: There is more to life than happiness.
Back to Moscow is an enthralling story of debauchery, discovery, and the Russian classics. In prose recalling the neurotic openheartedness of Ben Lerner and the whiskey-sour satire of Bret Easton Ellis, Guillermo Erades has crafted an unforgettable coming-of-age story and a complex portrait of a radically changing city.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Russia's capital is the most dynamic character in Erades's boozy bildungsroman. Fresh from a college heartbreak in Amsterdam, the 20-something Martin moves to Moscow in the late 1990s to complete a doctorate at the prestigious Moscow State University. Falling in with an international cohort of bros about town "the brothers" and the local women "dyevs" they pick up at popular nightclubs and bars, Martin decides that his nightly conquests can double as his doctoral research, as "a complete picture of Russian woman compare with the behavior of heroines in Russian literature." He begins with Lena, a spiritual, suffering young woman who resents his unwillingness to commit, and he continues on to the business-minded Yulya, schoolgirl Polina, and the traditional, provincial Tatyana, a recent Siberian transplant who wants nothing more than a quiet family life and offers Martin a chance to retire from the exhausting chase for more sex and better venues. Interspersed with these encounters are Martin's reflections on Russian classics, from Chekhov's Three Sisters to Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. The tragic resolution feels rushed, but readers will appreciate the texture and detail Erades gives to Moscow.
Customer Reviews
As good as Bright Lights, Big City
We read this because we were going to Russia and we thought it would be informative. It was. And a lot of fun. We got it off the shelf at the library, read it, and just bought it on ibooks to read again. It features lots of great locations all over Moscow, interesting characters, funny situations and an approptiately tragic ending. We always read a lot of books when preparing for a trip. This one is up there with Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast" for Paris and Hart Hemming's "The Descendants" for Hawaii.