A Terrible Country

by Keith Gessen

""A cause for big-hearted, witty, warm, compulsively readable, earnest, funny, full of that kind of joyful sadness I associate with Russia and its writers." --George Saunders, Man Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo. A literary triumph about Russia, family, love, and loyalty--the first novel in ten years from a founding editor of n+1 and author of All the Sad Young Literary Men. 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 returning his text messages. His dissertation adviser is dubious about his job prospects. It's the summer of 2008, and his bank account is running dangerously low. Perhaps a few months in Moscow are just what he needs. So Andrei sublets his room in Brooklyn, packs up his hockey stuff, and moves into the apartment that Stalin himself had given his grandmother, a woman who has outlived her husband and most of her friends. She survived the dark days of communism and witnessed Russia's violent capitalist transformation, during which she lost her beloved dacha. She welcomes Andrei into her home, even if she can't always remember who he is. Andrei learns to navigate Putin's Moscow, still the city of his birth, but with more expensive coffee. He looks after his elderly--but surprisingly sharp!--grandmother, finds a place to play hockey, a cafe to send emails, and eventually some friends, including a beautiful young activist named Yulia. Over the course of the year, his grandmother's health declines and his feelings of dislocation from both Russia and America deepen. Andrei knows he must reckon with his future and make choices that will determine his life and fate. When he becomes entangled with a group of leftists, Andrei's politics and his allegiances are tested, and he is forced to come to terms with the Russian society he was born into and the American one he has enjoyed since he was a kid. A wise, sensitive novel about Russia, exile, family, love, history and fate, A Terrible County asks what you owe the place you were born, and what it owes you. Writing with grace and humor, Keith Gessen gives us a brilliant and mature novel that is sure to mark him as one of the most talented novelists of his generation"--

Genres: Fiction, Russia, Audiobook, Contemporary, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Novels

352 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 10, 2018

About the author

Keith Gessen was born in Moscow in 1975 and came to the United States with his family when he was six years old. He is a co-founder of the literary magazine n+1 and the author of the novels All the Sad Young Literary Men and A Terrible Country. He has written about Russia for the London Review of Books, n+1, the Nation, the New Yorker, and the New York Times Magazine, and has translated or co-translated several books from Russian, including Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich, There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, and It's No Good by Kirill Medvedev. He is also the editor of the n+1 books What We Should Have Known, Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager, and City by City. He lives in New York with his wife, the author and publisher Emily Gould, and their son, Raphy, who likes squishy candy.

Reviews

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Andrei emigrated with his parents from Russia at the age of six. Now, he's 33 and returning to Moscow to take care of his 89 year old grandmother, who’s suffering from some dementia. And who’s lonely because all her friends are dead. The book takes you to 2008 Moscow. You feel like you there and Geisel does a good job of making you feel the time and place. I did feel I got a better understanding of Russian “capitalism”.

This is a grim book. And slow moving. Flashes of brilliance, like when it discusses what the switch from communism to capitalism has met for the average person or how those folks manage to live in Moscow with little money. Then, long dry patches when it was all I could do to keep reading. The ending shows how little Andrei still understands Russia, despite living there for a year.

The relationship between Andrei and his grandmother is done well, beautifully articulating the slow descent of someone into dementia.

So, I’m torn with how to rate this book. Settling on a three star, which doesn’t really reflect the love/hate relationship I had with this book.

My thanks to netgalley and Viking for an advance copy of this book.

[Fionnuala]

While I was reading this memoir-like novel about a Russian emigré's return to Moscow to spend time with his grandmother, I kept thinking about Andreï Makine's Dreams of My Russian Summers, another memoir-like novel in which the narrator returns to spend time with his grandmother. I have to say that there were many times I wished I was rereading that beautiful book instead.

But this was a bookgroup choice and I try to read what is chosen so I kept on reading in spite of feeling that Gessen's book could have benefitted from serious editing. There was the nucleus of a good story here, and the author had done lots of research, but for more than half of the book, it felt like he didn't know where he was going with the story. It's true that his narrator, Andrei Kaplan, didn't know where he was going in his life either, so perhaps the very slow and labored narrative echoed that, but I found it very difficult to remain engaged in the face of his aimlessness.

The episodes featuring Andrei's grandmother, a very endearing character, were the most interesting, but those episodes became repetitive, partly because the grandmother repeated herself (understandable since she was eighty-nine), but mostly because the narrator had little else to talk about for a large part of the book. The fact that the grandmother was losing her memory was doubly unfortunate for the reader because she couldn't tell her grandson very much about living through the Soviet era (unlike the grandmother in Dreams of my Russian Summers), which was the main reason thirty-three year old Andrei was spending time with her in Moscow: he needed her story for an academic article he was trying to write. He had completed a doctorate in Russian literature in an American university (he'd lived in Boston from the age of six), and he was now teaching Russian literature online plus working on getting articles published while waiting for a full-time job in the US. His backstory was probably one of the most unbelievable parts of this book for me; there was no echo of his literary studies in his narration, apart from a few brief mentions of Pushkin and Solzhenitzyn. Most of the time, he sounded and acted like a teenager, and he just wore me out.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audiobook...read by Ari Fliakos....was TERRIFIC...(warm and wonderful to be with)....
I’m convinced he enhanced the story!!!!
So.....
....I enjoyed this memoir which reads like a novel.

....The ( almost 90 year old), Grandmother was priceless!
Her memory was far and in between.... but she sure was a standout star!

....This book was a little too long....
and....
perhaps “Russian History Light”....( which was okay with me)....
but we definitely get an inside look at the historical corruption; life under Russian capitalism/and
......it’s very terrible, horrible, no good, very bad country!

Andrei Kaplan was born in Moscow. He immigrated to the United States when he was six years of age with his parents (we get background stories on his family, and education development).

We first meet Andrei, 30ish, while he was working on his dissertation ( which was terrible and horrible -too - going nowhere)...
So.... Andrei goes ‘somewhere’ - back home to Moscow.
His thoughts were that returning to his birth country might give him the inspiration he needed for his academic career. Hmmm, we shall see about that...
Andrei seemed more interested in ice hockey, than politics. (I’m bad - but that was okay with me too)....
I’m getting plenty of daily politics with our current events now!
Anyway....Andrei slowly and ‘very’ slowly begins to immerse himself with Russian culture. ( even gets involved with a bunch of leftists).
He also learns about some family secrets. ( his brother, Dima, had kept some truths from him)....

Andrei was fishing for information from his grandmother— it wasn’t easy!
With Grandma having dementia, she wasn’t the most reliable source.
But... like two people trying to connect who speak completely different languages—they find a way to understand what’s being said. ( her health decline was sad)....

Andrei even falls in love - with an activist named Yulia.
Doesn’t that sound romantic?)... haha...

....Lots of humor ...
....Best as a family character driven novel - more than the a deep Russian history lesson

By the end ... we know Andrei has to come to terms with who he is - his relationship between Russia and America- his political and personal, struggles -
about his future choices -

I simply came to love Andrei-his semi-lost soul ...
I rooted for him...and loved him.

If I HAD to pick one word to describe this book....
I’d say ‘charming’.

Yep... enjoyable AUDIOBOOK... warmed my heart - and was good company while walking 🚶‍♀️

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 4 out of 5]

[3.5] Andrei is stuck, both personally and professionally, so he flees NYC to Moscow to care for his grandmother. Even though the action (if you can call his daily routine action) frequently stalls, I enjoyed his character and the 2008/09 Moscow setting very much. And the cultural commentary and humor was right on target.

[Tommi · Rating 5 out of 5]

To justify another 5-star rating for my beloved blue publisher, especially because this title seems to receive more criticism than some others (and I can see where it’s coming from), here are some of my subjective reasons for the grade:

- It’s written in refreshingly short, easy sentences, that still convey a lot about such big topics. Zero pretense.

- It’s structured wonderfully. Everything is there for a reason.

- I’m rarely moved emotionally by novels, but this almost brought me to tears with a few unexpected, well-placed sentences.

- My country shares 1340 kilometers of border with this country, and as much as we would like to look away from that fact, there it is. Gessen’s novel provides a fascinating look into the capital of our neighbor that is so different from us, but, I guess, also similar in some respects.

- Things are not black and white, and Gessen does a fine job here in terms of history and politics.

- I’m able to recall most of the characters of the novel. Their names, along with their characteristics, are still well in my memory. It’s not a given when I read.

- All in all, I take it as a sign of a great novel when I’m not looking at page numbers, but gulp down a 400-page novel in a few days, enjoying every moment.

There you go!

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a terrible country. My Yolka took to America. Why did you come back?” She seemed angry.

A Terrible Country by Keith Gessen is published in the UK by perhaps my favourite of all publishers, Fitzcarraldo Editions, but is an odd fit for the "ambitious, imaginative and innovative writing" in which they normally excel.

It tells the story, set in 2008 of Andrei a thirty-something graduate in Russian literature and history. As he tells us in the novel's opening passage:

In the late summer of 2008, I moved to Moscow to take care of my grandmother. She was about to turn ninety and I hadn’t seen her for nearly a decade. My brother Dima and I were her only family; her lone daughter, our mother, had died years earlier. Baba Seva lived alone now in her old Moscow apartment. When I called to tell her I was coming, she sounded very happy to hear it, and also a little confused.

My parents and my brother and I left the Soviet Union in 1981. I was six and Dima was sixteen, and that made all the difference. I became an American, whereas Dima remained essentially Russian. As soon as the Soviet Union collapsed, he returned to Moscow to make his fortune. Since then he had made and lost several fortunes; where things stood now I wasn’t sure. But one day he Gchatted me to ask if I could come to Moscow and stay with Baba Seva while he went to London for an unspecified period of time.

As for me, I wasn’t really an idiot. But neither was I not an idiot. I had spent four long years of college and then eight much longer years of grad school studying Russian literature and history, drinking beer, and winning the Grad Student Cup hockey tournament (five times!); then I had gone out onto the job market for three straight years, with zero results. By the time Dima wrote me I had exhausted all the available post-graduate fellowships and had signed up to teach online sections in the university’s new PMOOC initiative, short for “paid massive online open course,” although the “paid” part mostly referred to the students, who really did need to pay, and less to the instructors, who were paid very little. It was definitely not enough to continue living, even very frugally, in New York. In short, on the question of whether I was an idiot, there was evidence on both sides.

Although clearly fictional, Gessen has drawn on his own experiences ('One of the seeds for the book came from conversations I had with my own grandmother when I lived with her in Moscow under circumstances a little bit like those in the book' - from a New Yorker interview) and stylistically Gessen has written the novel as Andrei's memoir, emulating the style very successfully, including even a what-happened-next Epilogue that rings so true I took some convincing this was a fictional novel. From the same interview Gessen explains his approach:

I love nonfiction, and I really love oral history. I like fiction that is made up, but I really love fiction that is thinly veiled autobiography. Each form has its rules, not even so much in terms of truth and falsity (although nonfiction should certainly be true) but, rather, in its pacing, its tolerance for coincidence (sometimes greater in nonfiction than in fiction, paradoxically), and even its tone. I think if I’d had enough material for a memoir, I’d have written a memoir. But I didn’t—my life in Russia was even less interesting than Andrei’s. But I did want it to sound like a memoir.

My ultimate model while writing the book was Tolstoy’s novel “The Cossacks,” but the books I most enjoyed reading while writing this one were memoirs of people’s sojourns in a foreign place for a certain period of time.

But perhaps the attempt to sound like a memoir is too successful as the memoir style extends to both form - the writing is not particularly literary and at time's rather crude - and content - with overly tedious detail (as he himself says, Andrei's life really isn't that interesting) and unnecessary anecdotes.

And unfortunately, a high proportion of Andrei's observations simply on life in Russia consist of the idiot abroad style 'but in America we...' comments (even down to ice hockey tactics, a topic with which he is obsessed). As Andrei himself observes:

I wasn't in America. That's the lesson I kept being taught, although I didn't seem willing to learn it.

the problem being that the reader has to experience the pain of Andrei being taught the lesson.

In the last quarter of the book, it takes a more political turn as Andrei gets involved in a protest movement. But a rather odd one that somehow believes the cure to Russia's ills isn't better democracy but rather Marxism (didn't someone try that before ... ). In the Epigraph, he records the disappointment of his fellow protesters when anti-Putin protests finally become more widespread, partly that they were no longer in Moscow but what was worse the protests were fundamentally liberal rather than socialist in character, appealing to free speech and voting rights rather than economic justice.

Although Andrei does have an astute observation on the liberal opposition to Putin which, read in 2018, also neatly skewers the liberal opposition (and yes that includes me) to his increasingly widespread international bedfellows such as Trump, Brexiteers and Corbynistas:

I had forgotten the tone that Russian opposition always took - “aggrieved” wasn’t the right word for it. It was sarcastic, self-righteous, full of disbelief that these idiots were running the country and that even bigger idiots out there supported them.

And finally in the last 30 pages of the novel, the reader's interest is grabbed as the story comes together and the pace of the narration accelerates to a disturbing end.

There are elements that provide an interesting look into life in Russia in 2008, but ultimately a disappointing novel. 1.5 stars rounded to 2 because of the publisher.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the books that was lingering on my stack at home from the Tournament of Books long list. It's is the story of Andrei, an ABD in Russian Studies in 2008 just as universities are cutting Russian Studies programs and his job and romance prospects are bleak. His brother asks him to return to Russia to care for their grandmother, and that's where the story begins.

I liked this more than I expected. Andrei is a sympathetic and imperfect character who seems to be a product of circumstances outside his control, and really so is his grandmother. It is her fault that Andrei and his brother moved to the United States, because she would tell her that Russia is "a terrible country." Andrei hasn't had much more luck in his new country, but navigating the new capitalist Russia isn't easy either. He struggles to get into hockey games and successful social situations, and to try to figure out where he fits.

[Steven Z. · Rating 5 out of 5]

At a time when Russia, Putin, conspiracy, and collusion dominate the news cycle it is wonderful to escape into a work of fiction that is absorbing, appealing to human emotion on many levels, and sadly, a comment on the reality of Russia today. As useful and engrossing as Keith Gessen’s new book A TERRIBLE COUNTRY is, it creates the anxiety and frustration that one associates with Putin’s Russia. Gessen is a Russian translator of poetry and short stories, but also of Nobel Prize winner Svertlana Alexievich’s VOICES FROM CHERNOBYL. Gessen like his sister Masha Gessen the author of A MAN WITHOUT A FACE: THE UNLIKELY RISE OF VLADIMIR PUTIN was born in Russia and raised in the United States, has an affinity for the Russian people who he believes are suffering from the Putin bargain, “you give up your freedoms, I make you rich. Not everyone was rich, but enough people were making do that the system held. And who was I to tell them they were wrong? If they liked Putin, they could have him.”

Gessen, like his main character Andrei Kaplan seems to be in a permanent state of semi-exile, somewhat naive, and in search of something-an academic position, a sense of who he really was perhaps. He writes in a somewhat John Updike style as he describes Andrei as a person who cannot seem to achieve the academic success that his peers have attained. He has a PhD in Russian literature, but cannot earn a faculty position at the university level. As a result he earns a living by teaches online courses, communicating through his blog. Since the money is not sufficient to live in New York, and his girlfriend Sarah has just broken up with him he accepts his brother Dima’s request to return to Moscow to take care of their aging grandmother. At the same time, Dima left Russia under strange circumstances for London, the reason of which becomes clearer later in the novel.

Upon his arrival in Moscow, Andrei learns that certain promises his brother had made were not true, but he resolves to try and learn as much from his grandmother, Baba Seva Efraimove Gekhtman about the Stalinist era as a basis for a journal article. The scent of Stalinist Russia is put forth through his grandmother who suffers from dementia, much more so than Dima had let on, but despite this affliction the reader is exposed to aspects of Stalinist Russia and how it evolves into Putin’s Russia. The same housing crisis that existed during Stalin’s regime remains. We witness the uneven distribution of wealth and the Putin kleptocracy. The FSB, much like the KGB in Soviet times seems everywhere among many examples. It is interesting how Gessen uses the location of Baba Seva’s apartment, the center of Moscow, close to the Kremlin, Parliament, and FSB headquarters to explain the daily plight of Russians.

The novel takes place in 2008 as Andrei arrives at the time Russian troops are supposedly withdrawing from Georgia. The 2008 financial crash is introduced and one can see how the Russians believe that the effect on Russia’s economy is the fault of the United States. Andrei is miserable in this setting and his life seems meaningless. He has no wife or children, he feels helpless in caring for his grandmother, he suffers from a lack of sleep and exercise, constantly searching to play in hockey games, and is forced to deal with the inane comments from students on his online blog.

For Andrei Moscow seems quite boorish as he is rejected by women, fears FSB types, and a bureaucracy that results in long lines for himself and his ailing grandmother. The transition from Stalinst tactics to that of Putin are clearly portrayed as his uncle has lost his life’s work as a geophysicist to Russ Oil, a conglomerate run by Putin’s cronies. Russ Oil will also reappear as an enemy of Andrei’s brother Dima as they create a monopoly for gas station expansion on a new highway. Putin’s mastery of the media emerges clearly. “The world may see him as a cold bloodied killer, a ruthless dictator, a grave digger of Russian democracy. But from the Russian perspective, well, he was our cold blooded killer, our ruthless dictator, our gravedigger.”

The book begins rather pedantically, and as the story develops the style grows from one of simplicity with little to challenge the reader mentally to a substantive view of Putin’s Russia, and the personal crisis that Andrei is experiencing. This is accomplished as the author introduces a number of new characters; hockey goalies, oilmen, academics, and oppositionist writers. However, the most important character remains Baba Seva who embodies the complex nature of Russian politics and society. She lost her country home to capitalism, but received her apartment thanks to her work on a Stalinist propaganda film of course due to the removal of another family from their home. Bab Seva had been a historian at Moscow State University, but as a Jew it appears she lost her position because of Stalin’s Doctor’s Plot in 1953. Perhaps the best line in the novel is when Andrei refers to living in an apartment so close to the KGB/FSB, it “was like living down the street from Auschwitz.”

The question that Gessen asks through a female who rejects Andrei’s advances, is his main character really cut out to live in Russia? The remark haunts Andrei as he tries to fit in somewhere in Russian society. It seems he does so finally when he catches on to a losing hockey teams and plays games six nights a week. More importantly he will make friends on the team. Those friendships and the return of his brother Dima shift the focus of the story.

Andrei will finally acquire a subject to write a paper and publish, one of his motivating goals upon returning to Moscow. The subject is in the form of Sergei an intellectual who has a theory concerning the development of capitalism in Russia and its links to Putin’s kleptocracy. Andrei hopes an article might lead to an academic position. He develops a strong friendship with Sergei, in addition to beginning a relationship with Yulia, another member of “October,” a small opposition group to Putin that Andrei has become part of.

Russia is a complicated topic. But Gessen combines sharp analysis with Updike type writing style. This approach belies a deep knowledge of Russian history and literature. The book is an important contribution as it allows its reader insights and a glimpse into a country that is very impactful for America and the world. Election hacking has been occurring in the United States and Europe for at least a decade, as have killings of people who oppose Putin outside Russia, murderous actions in Syria, and the list goes on and on. What is clear is that the United States must play close attention to Putin’s Russia, because their machinations are not going to end (particularly with the current administration in power) and we as a society must come to grips with that fact and pressure our government to take action to mitigate what has and will continue to occur. Gessen’s contribution to this task is a wonderful novel that describes Russia as a country that constantly wore down its people as they went along with their daily pursuits.

[Jaclyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Terrible Country is a wonderful book. Using tropes from the Russian masters who came before him, Gessen, with humour and razor-sharp observations, shines a light on life in contemporary Russia. It’s completely fascinating and funny and just so damn good I could barely stand it. If you like your fiction big and bold then this is for you. The prose may not set your world on fire but it has its moments and you’ll forgive it for the insights, access and revelations of this clever storyteller.

[Neale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrei’s life in New York is not what you would call successful. His girlfriend has just dumped him, he barely earns enough to survive from his online teaching job and his dissertation adviser seems to have no confidence in his future job prospects at all. So when his brother Dima calls and asks him to travel back to Russia, where he was born before emigrating to America when he was six, and look after their elderly grandmother, the decision almost seems to be made before the question is asked. Andrei’s grandmother lived and survived through the communist revolution. In fact, the apartment she lives in was gifted to her and her husband by Stalin himself. She now ekes out a terribly lonely life and complains to Andrei that she has outlived all of her friends and family. At first Andrei seems very immature and self-absorbed for a man in his thirties, and he makes little effort to find time to spend with his grandmother. However, as time passes we see Andrei maturing and realising that his grandmother is a wonderful person who has lived through some of Russia’s most historic moments. They start to develop a wonderful relationship. A great part of this novel is Andrei describing the differences that have occurred in Moscow since the fall of communism. He is a character who has seen both versions of Moscow and is not too impressed with the city that Moscow has morphed into under Putin’s leadership. Putin at this time is only Prime Minister, but everybody knows he is running things. I think that Gessen is showing us that there are also parts of Russia that have not changed. It could almost be 1812 with Napoleon knocking on Moscow’s door when Andrei and his grandmother are grinding up meat for an old Russian meal with an old fashioned turn wheel grinder (which Andrei gums up with fat). Many buildings remain architecturally the same yet now serve different purposes. Moscow seems to be a mish mash of the old and new, filled with anachronisms.
After meeting a few friends, Andrei joins a group of socialists and the political undertones of this book are brought to the fore. This group discusses Putin, the oligarchs, capitalism, and all the problems that this present Moscow is facing. Andrei falls for one of the members of this group and finds himself being slowly dragged into the world of public political demonstrations and protests. He eventually joins the party which is called October and define themselves as a revolutionary group. Andrei helps with translating their online content to English. An idea to give the group more reach out into the west. However, this is Russia, not the west, and this is brutally displayed with an ending that leaves you shocked. The setting at the end with the juxtaposition of the buildings from different eras is brilliantly done.
There are two major factors that I believe will affect some readers enjoyment and opinion of this novel. Firstly, a good chunk of this book is devoted to ice hockey. Andrei is obsessed by it and the passages are numerous and descriptive. Secondly there are many historical references about Moscow, Russia, the politics and zeitgeist of the early eras. I can see readers who do not like either of these topics having trouble enjoying the book as a whole. For me I loved it. I was tempted to give it a five. Great book! 4.5 Stars.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

"So there was my life - a series of errands for Dima punctuated by a series of rejections by Russians and a slate of activities with a roommate - my grandmother - who only remembered the ones she didn't like."

At first glance, this pretty much sums it up. For hundreds of pages, we are treated to the daily interactions, and rather mundane conversations, of a fairly limited cast of characters. It's well-written, very coherent, and mildly interesting, and we develop a clear picture of the lives they lead. Around the dinner table. At private parties. Playing anagrams. Discussing politics. Falling for the wrong love interest. Everyone concerned with identity; who are the insiders and who the outsiders? They wax nostalgic for a lost past and shake their fists at a ruling-class whose progress excludes the average citizen. And the greatest obsession is with money, power, and regret (particularly as it relates to real estate and personal possessions).

All is suffused with malaise but an electric energy hums just below the surface. And, ultimately, some seemingly innocuous transaction leads to the end of all that has come before. I rather regret having quoted Anton Chekhov in another review just a few weeks ago, because it really belongs in this one. Gessen is absolutely, positively channeling Chekhov here.

Early on I made a note, musing about whether this novel was "a slow burn or just a pilot light". It turns out to be both. The embers take a very long time to catch, but there is warmth throughout and, eventually, light and heat and transformation. With clear borrowings from "Uncle Vanya" and "The Cherry Orchard" (especially), there is also a votive candle placed upon the altar of one of Russia's greatest dramatists.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Keith Gessen was born in Russia of Jewish parents, who emigrated to the US when he was still a child – and is now an author, journalist (specialising in Russia), book-critic, translator and journal editor.

This is his second novel – and comes with by George Saunders and Elif Batuman, authors respectively of the 2017 Booker winner and one of the best books of 2018.

It is published by Fitzcarraldo Editions – one of the leading UK small presses and most notably recent winner of the 2018 Man Booker International Prize with Flights. Fitzcarraldo Editions (their words) specialise in contemporary fiction and long-form essays ….. it focuses on ambitious, imaginative and innovative writing, both in translation and in the English language . Their novels are (my words) distinctively and beautifully styled, with plain, deep blue covers and a "French-flap" style. Fitzcarraldo previously publishged Kirill Medvedev’s It's No Good in translation by Gessen.

This book is written in the style of a memoir and although fiction is inspired by some of Gessen’s own experiences – living with his elderly Grandmother in Moscow.

The book is narrated in the first person by Andrei Kaplan – who left Moscow with his parents aged 6 in 1981 (exactly like Gessen) and who has struggled to find his way in the US as a Russian literature/history academic – failing to find a tenured teaching or post-graduate position he does low paid on-line teaching. In the later Summer of 2008 he is contacted by his 10-year older brother who has had to flee Russia to some state related problems with one of his business ventures and wants Andrei to go to Moscow to look after their elderly grandmother (an academic who survived the trials of the Communist years only to have much of her remaining wealth taken from her when her second husband’s oil explorations are expropriated by the state) and to keep an eye on the next door flat which Dima rents out as an investment.

The book is seemingly set down by Kaplan at a later date reflecting on his time in Moscow over the year or so from 2008 – as the financial crisis strikes first the US but then Russia.

Dima (under financial pressure himself) urges him to return to the US so they can sell the two flats – something Andrei resists as he finds himself increasingly unwilling either to abandon the Russian roots he is rediscovering or the (to him) moving and tragic figure of his Grandmother. Both Moscow and his Grandmother are fundamentally changed from Andrei’s childhood memories and cause Andrei to reflect on his assumptions and beliefs, and to think through his loyalties to friends, family, academia and to countries.

Andrei has an idea of using his visit to further his reputation in Russian studies by interviewing and profiling locals and via some pick up ice-hockey he plays finds himself drawn towards a crowd of left wing, literary dissidents who while not communists, believe that he new ills of Russia stem not from a Russian-specific crime and oligarchy led distortion of capitalism but instead from the fundamental inequity and injustice which underpins capitalism – a view which is initially new to Andrei (as a Russian émigré he was fundamentally anti-communist) but which clearly appeals to him as a better explanation of his and his family’s lives.

The original inspiration for the book was Gessen’s experience of living with his elderly Grandmother in Moscow – and the interactions between Andrei and his grandmother are particularly poignant. She is suffering from age-related dementia - lending a deliberately banal and repetitive tenor to much of their conversations as she often cannot even remember who Andrei is or understand some of the changes she is witnessing, and her distress is regularly underpinned by the loss of her Summer dacha as a result of her husband’s difficulties, and the emigration of her only daughter to the US where she then died of cancer (often causing her to say that she has been abandoned by her friends and family – something Andrei finds both heart ending and distressing). Andrei’s original hope to gain insights into Communist Russia from his Grandmother are thwarted by her patch memory, but her own sense of the modern Russia’s flaws are strongly expressed and when lucid she urges him to leave the “terrible country” before it is too late - a warning which looks more like a prophecy as Andrei’s life in Moscow unravels in the last part of the book with lasting consequences not for him but for those he leaves behind when he returns to America.

Overall this is an interesting and easy to absorb novel, presenting a view of the development of Russian society.

[Alison Hardtmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

. . . I felt the terrible freedom of this place. It was a fortress set down in a hostile environment. On one side the Mongols; on the other the Germans, Balts, and Vikings. So the Russians built this fortress here on a bend in the Yauza River, and hoped for the best. They built it big because they were scared. It was a gigantic country, and even now, in the twenty-first century, barely governed. You could do anything, really. And amid this freedom, this anarchy, people met and fell in love and tried to comfort one another.

In A Terrible Country, under-employed adjunct professor, Andrei Kaplan, moves to Moscow to care for his grandmother. He grew up as her adored grandson, but soon after he arrives, she says this:

"Andryusha," she said. "You're such a dear person to me. To our whole family. But I can't remember right now. How did we come to know you?"

And so begins Andrei's life in Moscow. He's teaching several on-line courses, so he spends hours in the only affordable coffee shop he can find. He cares for his little grandmother, someone he cares deeply about, but is nonetheless often frustrated by. He has trouble making any connections, and even finding a place to play hockey is an insurmountable task. But eventually he settles into Moscow, into the place his grandmother consistently reminds him is a terrible country.

I was utterly charmed by this novel, even charmed by the Moscow Keith Gessen presents, a violent place where might makes right and ordinary people are trampled, if not by the authorities, then by the gangsters who control much of what goes on. Because underneath that cold and disregard are ordinary Muscovites, quietly making lives for themselves, playing hockey, building a dacha, falling in love and working to change their country. This is an outlier for me, as usually a WMFuN* is not something I have tolerance for, but Andrei is such a warm, caring, struggling guy that I liked him and the setting, from Moscow, to the academics scrambling to find employment, to the Muscovites joining together to change Russia was just so fascinating and vividly described.

*White Male Fuck-up Novel

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may be rounding up a bit here, but I really enjoyed this engaging and often funny book backed by a deep knowledge of Russian literature, history and culture. It was interesting to read about Putin's Russia from the oddly endearing voice of a struggling academic with roots in both Russia and America. A very good book full of nice little touches.

[Bam cooks the books · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3-3.5 stars. This novel reads like a memoir. It's about a young man, born in Russia but raised in the US, who goes back to Moscow to take care of his grandmother who has dementia. At first he's a fish out of water there but over the next year, he settles in and makes friends, falls in love, but unfortunately makes some serious mistakes because he is really a foreigner who doesn't understand this 'terrible country.' A very interesting look at Russia under Putin and the oil oligarchs.

This was the March choice for my library's Reading Roundtable group but we never got a chance to discuss it due to the library closing for the Covid-19 lockdown.

[Oriana · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a bummer I didn't review this months ago when I read it (god, that is just my constant refrain, isn't it?). I kept waiting until I had time to really think about it and do it justice, which never happens, so here we are, six months later, as I try to piece together something intelligent.

Anyway I've been pretty wary of Gessen since All the Sad Young Literary Men, which I found decidedly meh. But then I read his incredibly moving New Yorker essay, "Why Did I Teach My Son to Speak Russian?" in which he vacillates wildly about why on earth he's imbuing his son with the language of the country from which his own parents fled. It's really lovely and obviously springs from the same place in Gessen's mind that this book bubbled out of. So then right away I had to read this.

And it was in fact terrific, almost deceptively so. It has a very slow pace and seems at first to be a very small story. Our hero, at loose ends in Brooklyn as he tries to find a teaching job, is convinced by his shyster brother to spend a few months in Moscow looking after their grandmother, who is becoming a bit too old to be alone all the time. So for a long time it's a book about a sad young literary man (lol) trying to reacclimate to the city and country he left as a kid, finding his way down familiar streets grown strange, familiar cultural customs gone stale, familiar slang in a language that won't quite come naturally out of his mouth. The majority of the scenes, for the first like two-thirds of the book, are either Andrei in the small apartment with his grandmother, or him wandering the city in search of a reasonably priced café or a game of hockey or a place to buy socks that used to be right here.

I really love this kind of meditation on an untethered life, the kind that tends to be written by first- or second-generation emigrées, filled with this sort of inability to feel fully part of one culture or the other, one country or the other, one language or the other. I loved slowly watching Andrei relearn all these things he had lost, become familiar once again with this place he thought was pretty much lost to him forever — and which, in many ways, indeed was, since a whole lot had changed in Moscow in the few decades he'd been away. And I really loved learning about contemporary Russia, a place I've never been but where I also have roots, though a few generations further back than Gessen.

Anyway. The last third of the book picks up quickly, and suddenly a lot happens when for so long so little did. It worked, though it felt a bit smushed. But altogether I liked this book very much, and it's a good reminder that so many authors need to purge themselves of their first middling book so they can get on to writing ones that are good.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
Tournament of Books Play-in Round

Comments forthcoming.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book about what it means to return to a place that is no longer home. Reading it brought back memories of Tommy Orange’s “There there”, or, more specifically, of Gertrude Stein’s quote about Oakland, “there is no there there” from which Orange’s book drew its title. For both Stein and the narrator of A Terrible Country, the place they thought they knew is now very different.

The men too fit a pattern. Big, kasha fed, six feet tall, stuffed into expensive suits, balancing themselves on shiny, pointy-toed shoes, never smiling. Ten years ago you walked down a Moscow street and ran into a lot of thugs in cheap leather jackets. Those guys were gone now, replaced by these guys. Or maybe they were the same guys.

Our narrator is Andrei Kaplan and the book is written as a memoir. It is very convincing and often hard to remember it is a work of fiction. I understand the author has drawn on his own experiences, but this is not a memoir of Gessen’s life. Andrei returns to Moscow to look after his grandmother at the request of his brother who has had to leave Russia for his own safety. The novel relates Andrei’s experiences during the time he spends in Moscow. Because it is styled as a memoir, it can sometimes seem that Gessen is exploring too many tangential issues or providing more detail than is required. That is one way of looking at it. The alternative view is that he is creating a very believable protagonist and writing a story that feels like it must have happened and must have happened exactly like it is written here. I finished the book totally believing in Andrei Kaplan even though he is an entirely fictional character. As Andrei settles down in Moscow and attempts to look after his grandmother who is increasingly senile, we see him struggle to fit in. He is never sure whether to use the formal or informal form of address when talking to people (this whole area seems to be a nightmare that we English speakers sneakily avoid), he thinks he looks like a foreigner and worries, at least initially, about his accent. Gradually, he settles in and meets people, including getting involved with a socialist group called October.

This links to the other main theme of the book which is the effect of oppressive regimes on the societies they govern. Andrei’s grandmother worries about walking past any protest groups for fear of getting involved. Andrei finds himself getting more and more involved with October until we reach a dramatic climax. Putin is an ever present factor in Andrei’s thinking:

It was hard to square all the talk of bloody dictatorship with all the people in expensive suits, getting into Audis, talking on their cellphones. Was this naïve? … For me — and not just for me, I think — Soviet oppression and Soviet poverty had always been inextricably intertwined.

And

Luckily, we in Russia had Putin. Whenever trouble reared its head, Putin was there to tame it…Dmitri Medvedev was president and Putin was prime minister - but when push came to shove, Putin was still in charge. Everything was OK. Russians could sleep at night.

And the novel takes time to contemplate the “state of the nation”. For example:

…it was as if Russia were a drug addict who received every concoction only after it was perfectly crystallised, maximally potent. Nowhere were Western ideas, Western beliefs, taken more seriously; nowhere were they so passionately implemented…

For me, the memoir structured worked well because it helped me get to know the narrator, and this combination of returning to a changed place alongside views of how a society is affected by an oppressive regime made the whole book compulsive reading. This is the eighth book I have read that has been published by Fitzcarraldo and it feels very different to the other seven, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This is a thoughtful, though-provoking, sometimes funny novel that talks about two serious topics.

[Sonya · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a young immigrant from the Soviet Union, i related to the book a lot. Russia may have capitalism but it doesnt mean the corruption went away. Only the people who have connections and money survive Russia. Anyone interested in how Russia continues to operate should read this book. I recommend it to anyone but especially former soviet citizens

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review soon.

[Katie Long · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I knew more about Russian history and literature. While I picked up on a few allusions, and an immersive style vaguely familiar from a first year Drama survey course, I am sure I missed a LOT more. Even so, I think there is a broader story here about the ambivalence of moving on, and mostly up, from where you were born that is relatable in any context.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrei is one lost puppy floundering around in New York in 2008 after his girlfriend dumps him. When his brother Dima calls him to come take care of their 89-year-old grandmother in Moscow for just a little while, he says what the hell and jumps on a plane to Moscow where he lived as a child. He’s supposed to be working on his dissertation for the Slavic Language Department at the university where he holds a crappy job, but he can’t narrow down his topic. He thinks he’ll learn about the Soviets from his grandmother to add focus to his dissertation. But when he gets to Russia, he learns she has dementia and can barely remember who he is, much less stories from the Soviet-era.

It doesn’t take long for Andrei to mimic his grandmother in saying, mostly in reference to Moscow, that Russia is a terrible country. A new type of capitalism has replaced communism where only the oligarchs can afford the goods in the stores. Outrageously-priced restaurants exist next door to inexpensive ones. Mercedes drive down the streets along side beaters. Gratuitous violence overruns the city. But gradually, Andrei acclimates. First, he finds friends to play hockey with. Then, he finds friends who pull him into a political dissident group. That’s when things go awry.

The book takes its time getting where its going. All the while, the reader can see the subjects of Andrei’s dissertation around him. As a reader, I want to shake him and say, “Look!”

You fall in love with Andrei. He’s so kind. So naïve. Such a good care-taker of his grandmother. He keeps postponing going back to the US even as his evil brother Dima threatens to sell their grandmother’s apartment. Andrei sees Russia in a different light. It’s home for him. It’s where he grew up.

Andrei is the polar opposite of his capitalist brother Dima. But something happens that changes Andrei and his opinion of Russia forever. Does he become more like his brother? Or is he simply seeing things more accurately? Ironically, this horrible thing takes Andrei to the place he always wanted to go. Is he a fraud?

This is a wonderful exposé of 2008 Moscow and Russian capitalism. It’s also a wonderful sort of coming-of-age story of a lost young man thinking he’s locked down his political sentiments then rejecting them when the comfort of US capitalism knocks on his door.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the better books on the TOB shortlist. Not only does the writing flow with great characterization (the grandmother is a standout) but we learn some things about modern day Russia and our current political climate. In some ways Gessen's love letter to his grandmother (and yes I do believe the book is a tad auto-biographical) is also a warning to an America that believes itself immune to the corruption of unrestrained capitalism that has perverted Russia. It gave me pause to think about signs of America leaning into authoritarianism and looking for ways to outlaw peaceful dissent. Yes dear readers, it can happen here.

I listened to over half of this book in audio....the narration is excellent.

Gessen is an interesting guy, teaches journalism at Columbia, helped translate Nobel prize winner Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, and is married to writer Emily Gould. I hope we hear more from him....I always feel like ex-pats have a unique perspective, living as they do with one foot in each world.

[William Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful novel. Reading this book strengthened my commitment to do all I can until November 3rd to make sure that we don't re-elect Putin's puppet.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 rounded down

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

If "A Terrible Country" were a memoir, I might have spared in an extra star. Mr. Gessen isn't a particularly talented writer, but he's at least chosen to write about two fascinating subject, Soviet history and Putin-era Russia. If he chooses to explore these topics from the perspective of a whiny dullard, well, at least he's being honest. However, he intends "A Terrible Country" as a novel, which means he thinks we'll enjoy spending 443 novels inside the head of Andrew Kaplan, yet another embittered failed academic (at least the narrator of "Confessions of the Fox" offered the novelty of being transgender) whose token claim to distinction is that he was born in Moscow, where he returns at the age of 33 (that might sound metaphorical, but trust me, Gessen doesn't have enough imagination for even that kind of heavy-handed symbolism) in 2008 to care for his ailing grandmother. Grandma Seva, age 89, who lived through World War II and the Stalin era, would be a moving, tragic figure in any other novel, but in "A Terrible Country," she's merely a symbol of Kaplan's inadequacies (which are legion -- no wonder the poor lady is so frail). Over the course of a year, Kaplan teaches online classes, complains about the price of everything, is lured into a group of political dissidents with no discernible agenda, and plays hockey. Lots and lots of hockey. Much of which he describes with the unmodulated specificity of the stranger sitting next to you on the train who pretends to strike up a conversation with you just so he can enjoy the sound of himself talking.

Why the hell is this a novel?

The answer, I think, comes about a third of the way through, when Kaplan's arch-nemesis, a more successful professor named Alex Fishman, shows up in Moscow for the apparent purpose of monopolizing a dinner party to which our humble narrator has been invited. Fishman seems to be modeled on someone whom Mr. Gessen despises but hasn't the guts to insult by name, so he reduces him to a caricature. It's not a new trick, but it's been done by better writers in better books.

Even some of the positive reviews of this book call it "boring." I sure won't argue that point.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I enjoyed this book, a memoir like novel of a grandson's return to Moscow to look after his ailing grandmother (he left at the age of 6 for America), I do feel it could do with some serious editing. It is repetitive (perhaps correctly as his grandmother is losing it gradually and repeats herself a lot), and too long. The 'I' persona learns a lot about life under Russian 'capitalism' (it's 2008/9 and Putin is Prime Minister during the financial crash), but doesn't seem to understand the serious implications of protest (he does it largely to be near a woman he fancies) in such a state. He's more interested in whether he can get a good game of ice hockey, and attending parties when he can. Great descriptions of Moscow and its way of life though. 3.5 stars

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for my Tiny Book Club and because it is one of the three books of the play-in round at The Tournament of Books. I expected the novel to be interesting and it was. I don't know why I am so drawn to Russia but I have read many, many books set there as well as written by Russian authors old and current. Perhaps because for all my life they have been our chief enemy.

A Terrible Country is somewhat subdued in comparison to all those other novels but in its quiet way gave me a feel for what Russia is like now.

Andrei Kaplan, single, early 30s, son of Russian immigrants, dragging out his PhD dissertation in New York, has been called by his brother Dima to return to Moscow and care for their elderly grandmother. Dima had been living back in Russia for some time, as a kind of lesser gangster, but one of his schemes has landed him in enough trouble that he must leave the country or risk going to jail.

Andrei goes. He finds his grandmother in a progressive dementia. He finds Moscow fairly unrecognizable from what he knew in his youth. His Russian is rusty and his money is tight.

His grandmother is confused, a bit rickety though she likes to walk, but when she is not moaning about how all of her friends are dead and how lonely she is, she is sweet. My dad had Alzheimers and though he was not always sweet to my mom or his caregivers, he was always sweet to me. Some years after he died I cared for my mom who had had two bad strokes. So I could relate to the scene of Andrei in a small apartment with this elderly woman, his fumbling attempts to help her out, his frustration and apprehension about losing her. Both of Andrei's and Dima's parents are dead. She is the only family they have left.

Over the course of a year, Andrei learns his way around, his Russian comes back, he finds some guys to play hockey with and he befriends a group of activists who stage small protests against the Putin government. The pace of the story is a bit slow but I didn't mind. Spending 335 pages inside Andrei's head, I came to a fondness for him despite his loser demeanor. He even finds a girlfriend.

But he is no match for these people who grew up under communism and have lived through all the changes since. This is a political story but Keith Gessen makes it personal. That was the main appeal of the book for me since I only know of today's Russia through the news. The other characters make more clear how the country is made up of people, not just their leaders.

Beyond that I got a poignant look at an immigrant who goes "home" only to feel like an exile from America and then to find out how American he actually is.

[Big Al · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Terrible Narrator

[Wojciech Szot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bardzo przyjemna powieść. Nie jest to może komplement, ale stwierdzenie faktów. Anglojęzyczni mają na to określenie “comfort book”.

Cóż, okazuje się, że można napisać "comfort book" o putinowskiej Rosji. Keith Gessen choć tytuł książce nadał odpowiednio mocny, to dawkuje nam opisów rosyjskich potworności, poruszając się zgrabnie pomiędzy typową obyczajówką, a powieścią jednak z politycznym przesłaniem.

Podoba mi się perspektywa, z której Gessen opowiada o Rosji - rodzice bohatera “Strasznego kraju” wyemigrowali do Stanów gdy ten był dzieckiem, a w kraju została babcia pozbawiona daczy (dużo tu o tym, że każdy moskwianin ma daczę), choć z mieszkaniem w świetnej lokalizacji w centrum miasta. Andriej wraca do Moskwy, by opiekować się babcią, której do tej pory pomagał jego brat, Dima, którego do Rosji wcześniej przygnała potrzeba robienia interesów i dobre pieniądze. Teraz Dima ucieka, żeby nie być “drugim Chodorem”, a Andriej, średniointeligentny rusycysta, który nie zrobił właściwie żadnej sensownej kariery i myśli o napisaniu książki o Rosji, jedzie prosto w paszczę lwa.

Gessen książkę kieruje do czytelników przekonanych, że Moskwa to jakieś biedne miasto na końcu znanego im świata, w którym są tylko oligarchowie i babcie sprzedające kapcie w przejściach podziemnych. Sporo tu przekonywania nas, że jest inaczej, opisów rosyjskiej średniej klasy biurowej, cen w restauracjach, rozważań na temat cen mieszkań w Nowym Jorku i Moskwie, a do tego sport. Adriej jest bowiem zapalonym hokeistą i wydaje mu się, że gdzie jak nie w Moskwie realizować swoje pasje. Nie jest łatwo dostać się do jakiejkolwiek amatorskiej drużyny, ale gdy to się w końcu udaje, to Andriej ze swoim pechem trafia do drużyny słabeuszy przegrywających wszystkie mecze.

No i jest babcia, którą trzeba się zajmować. Babcie okazuje się fatalnym materiałem na książkę, bowiem prawie nic nie pamięta, a interesuje ją głównie to czy przyjaciółka zaprosi ją następnego lata na daczę. Ale wystarczy, by Andriej zaczął babci słuchać, by historie zaczęły się pojawiać. Obyczajówka rodzinna o dwóch diametralnie się różniących braciach i babci, konflikt pokoleniowy, przewidywalny moralitet. Ponieważ Gessen mówi do ludzi, którzy czytają wiadomości, to oczywiście będzie tu i Majdan, i oligarchowie i przekręty i KGB, i II wojna światowa, ale podane w niewielkich dawkach, nie irytują ostentacją,

Na marginesie dodam, że Gessen trochę satyrycznie i krytycznie opowiada też o naukach humanistycznych w Stanach Zjednoczonych. To może być jakąś zachętą dla akademików chcących zobaczyć, że tam też bywa ciężko.

Ciekawe jest również to, że Gessen doskonale zdaje sobie sprawę z tego, jakie mamy oczekiwania wobec książki o Rosji i nimi gra, oczywiście w ironiczny sposób - cytując “Annę Kareninę”, czy opowiadając o mękach Andrieja podczas lektury Sołżenicyna, trafnie moim zdaniem zahacza o pytanie - czy można napisać literaturę popularną o Rosji, która nie będzie odwoływać się do literackiego dziedzictwa tego kraju? Czy Rosję da się zobaczyć bez tych obciążeń? A jeśli tak, to jaka ona jest? Gessen zatrzymuje się w połowie drogi, bo sam jest synem rosyjskich imigrantów, ale już samo zwrócenie uwagi na ten temat w powieści ewidentnie skierowanej do szerokiego grona czytelników i czytelniczek, jest już wartością samą w sobie.

Czytając przełożoną przez Agatę Popędę książkę zupełnie mnie nie interesowało to, czy Rosja jest taka jaką ją Gessen nam pokazuje. To powieść i do tego zdecydowanie z kategorii tych lżejszych, w których dynamicznie przechodzi się z jednej łzawej sceny do innej, już bardziej wesołej. Nic tu nie obraża inteligencji czytelnika, ale też nie jest to żadne wyzwanie intelektualne - ot, historia do czytania przed spaniem, która nie drażni, ale też nie pobudza nadmiernie. “Comfort book” idealny.