A Terrible Country
A Novel
“Hilarious. . . . To understand Russia, read A Terrible Country.”
—Time
"This artful and autumnal novel, published in high summer, is a gift to those who wish to receive it."
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
"Hilarious, heartbreaking . . . A Terrible Country may be one of the best books you'll read this year."
—Ann Levin, Associated Press
A New York Times Editors' Choice
Named a Best Book of 2018 by Bookforum, Nylon, Esquire, and Vulture
A literary triumph about Russia, family, love, and loyalty—from a founding editor of n+1 and the author of Raising Raffi
When Andrei Kaplan’s older brother Dima insists that Andrei return to Moscow to care for their ailing grandmother, Andrei must take stock of his life in New York. His girlfriend has stopped…
Keith Gessen is the author of A Terrible Country, All the Sad Young Literary Men and a founding editor of n+1. He is the editor of three nonfiction books and the translator or co-translator, from Russian, of a collection of short stories, a book of poems, and a work of oral history, Nobel Prize-winner Svetlana Alexievich's Voices from Chernobyl. A contributor to The New Yorker and The London Review of Books, Gessen teaches journalism at Columbia and lives in New York with his wife and sons.