The Dream Life of Sukhanov - Hardcover

Grushin, Olga

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670916099 ISBN 13: 9780670916092

Publisher: Viking, 2006

Synopsis

At the age of fifty-six, Anatoly Sukhanov has everything a man could want: a glittering career, a beautiful wife and two children, a grand apartment in the smartest part of Moscow. He thinks, possibly, he has achieved his dream - 'to carve from the world around him a small, secure happiness, all his own'. Then perestroika dawns and the rigid structures of the world in which Sukhanov has thrived begin to crumble and he is beset by heartbreaking visions from his past: many years ago Sukhanov had been a brilliant young artist in Moscow, but, fearing the stifling hand of the state, he made a decision to abandon his dreams in favour of a life of comfort and, most of all, safety. Now, as the shadows of his past bring him to a terrifying state of uncertainty he begins to realise that perhaps when he compromised his dreams to live a better life, he ended up hardly living at all.

Brilliantly imagined, moving and with a driving plot, The Dream Life of Sukhanov is an utterly original tale of hope and fear, youth and old age, by a remarkable new talent in contemporary fiction.

About this title

Review:

'Grushin has written a remarkably accomplished first novel...it calls to mind the great Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakov' -- Daily Mail

'Grushin is clearly a writer of large and original talent' -- James Lasdun

'Grushin's gilded writing describes cruelty and folly and delivers the subtlest, more heartbreaking type of literary suspense' -- Vogue

'On course to become the next great American novelist' -- Harpers and Queen

'Outstanding. Grushin guides a daring plot artfully . . . capitavatingly, she evokes the grit and secret sweetness of late Soviet Moscow' -- TLS

'So good, I felt like buying 10 copies and sending them to friends . . . a stunning fictional debut' -- Lesley Chamberlain, Independent

'That rare debut that requires no hype. Simply stunning' -- Library Journal

‘A startling, complex novel of rare poetic power . . . Grushin paints the psychological collapse of her protagonist in languorous, shimmery prose' -- Metro

‘Magnificent . . . astonishingly beautiful . . . The writing of angels’ -- The Irish Times

‘Sinuous prose . . . In Grushin’s wonderful novel, the incandescent wealth of Russia’s literary heritage blazes’ -- Telegraph

From the Publisher:

'The Dream Life of Sukhanov' has been shortlisted for the Orange Award for New Writers.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0670916099
• ISBN 13: 9780670916092
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368