by Sana Krasikov
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jan 2017
560 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A sweeping multigenerational debut novel about idealism, betrayal, and family secrets that takes us from Brooklyn in the 1930s to Soviet Russia to post-Cold War America.
When the Great Depression hits, Florence Fein leaves Brooklyn College for what appears to be a plum job in Moscow - and the promise of love and independence. But once in Russia, she quickly becomes entangled in a country she can't escape. Many years later, Florence's son, Julian, will make the opposite journey, immigrating back to the United States. His work in the oil industry takes him on frequent visits to Moscow, and when he learns that Florence's KGB file has been opened, he arranges a business trip to uncover the truth about his mother, and to convince his son, Lenny, who is trying to make his fortune in the new Russia, to return home. What he discovers is both chilling and heartbreaking: an untold story of what happened to a generation of Americans abandoned by their country.
The Patriots is a riveting evocation of the Cold War years, told with brilliant insight and extraordinary skill. Alternating between Florence's and Julian's perspectives, it is at once a mother-son story and a tale of two countries bound in a dialectic dance; a love story and a spy story; both a grand, old-fashioned epic and a contemporary novel of ideas. Through the history of one family moving back and forth between continents over three generations, The Patriots is a poignant tale of the power of love, the rewards and risks of friendship, and the secrets parents and children keep from one another.
"Starred Review. Krasikov masterfully and devastatingly exposes the 'whole dark clockwork' of totalitarianism and asks what it means to be a hero, a patriot, a human being." - Booklist
"Starred Review. Ambitious and compelling ... We do the best we can in an imperfect world, Krasikov reminds us in a dark tale brightened by tender compassion for human frailty." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. With stunning depth and maturity, this debut work does what a historical novel should: it takes us inside a time and place we may know little about, and shows it through the eyes of characters whose ideas and prejudices are of their own time, not our own." - Library Journal
"The plot lags and the prose is awkward, but readers may discover some interesting details of the time and place through the extensive research Krasikov implements into the story." - Publishers Weekly
"I found on every page an observation so acute, a sentence of such truth and shining detail, that it demanded re-reading for the sheer pleasure of it. The Patriots has convinced me that Krasikov belongs among the totemic young writers of her era." - Khaled Hosseini, author of And the Mountains Echoed and The Kite Runner
"The Patriots is a masterwork, a Dr. Zhivago for our times. It is a novel rooted in characters so real you weep over their tragic fates, so realized you think you're watching a movie, with sentences so sharp and wise they stop you in your tracks." - Yann Martel, author of The High Mountains of Portugal and Life of Pi
"Sana Krasikov's masterful The Patriots works that rare novelistic magic that can sweep us over tumultuous decades, illuminate the workings of history, and at the same time reveal the personal depths of rich, complex characters. This is one of the finest first novels I've read in ages." - Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Empire of Night and The Star of Istanbul
This information about The Patriots was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sana Krasikov's debut short story collection, One More Year, was named a finalist for the 2009 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award, received a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award, and won the 2009 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker and The Atlantic, among other publications. Born in Ukraine, Krasikov grew up in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and New York, where she currently lives with her husband and their two children.
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