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Published Dec 2022
200 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Paperback Original.
Publication Information
From Man Booker International Prize finalist Josip Novakovich comes a satiric novel with teeth - a tale of Russia in the early aughts, perfect for fans of Dostoevsky and Gary Shteyngart.
In this picaresque novel set in the early 2000s, David, an investment banker with Eastern European roots, goes bankrupt from the Enron fiasco, and moves to Russia to do some soul-searching. In the shadow of the Khazan cathedral, he's arrested for the murder of two Georgian wine-importers. David is imprisoned at Kresty, bewildered and alone. One day, Putin himself visits, with a modest proposal for David: to travel to Georgia and slip plutonium into the president's wine. This is the price of freedom: to assassinate a president.
Told with Josip Novakovich's signature skill and satiric wit, Rubble of Rubles delves into the absurdity and menace of totalitarianism. At the crossroads of literary fiction, satire, and crime, this is a novel for modern fans of Notes from Underground and Absurdistan.
"In this dizzying, darkly comic novel, Novakovich explores Putin's Russia through the eyes of a Jewish New Yorker arrested on trumped-up charges in 2006 St. Petersburg... Not only is this sickeningly surreal, it's a hell of a ride." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Readers expecting a predictable story of a midlife crisis abroad will be surprised...[T]hroughout the madcap plotting, a pervasive sense of menace never dissipates. An international comedy of errors that ventures to knowingly bleak places." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Josip Novakovich emigrated from Croatia to the United States at the age of 20. He has published a dozen books, including two novels, April Fool's Day (in ten languages) and Rubble of Rubles, five story collections (Infidelities, Yolk, Salvation and Other Disasters, Heritage of Smoke, and Tumbleweed) and three collections of narrative essays as well as two books of practical criticism. His work was anthologized in Best American Poetry, the Pushcart Prize and O. Henry Prize Stories. He has received the Whiting Writer's Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, the Ingram Merrill Award and an American Book Award, and in 2013 he was a Man Booker International Award finalist. He has taught at Penn State, University of Cincinnati, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and now at Concordia University in Montreal.
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