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Russian Gothic, a short and intense novel by Belgium-based Belorussian novelist Aleksandr Skorobogatov that, since its initial publication in Russia in 1991, has gone on to sell over a million copies worldwide and hailed as an early masterpiece of post-Soviet literature, eliciting comparisons to Gogol and Bulgakov.
Russian Gothic is a dark tale of the descent into paranoia and violence of Nikolai, a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan war. When a mysterious figure, Sergeant Bertrand, appears on his doorstep and starts insinuating that Nikolai's wife, Vera, may be having an affair, Nikolai's faith in his wife, the only person to stand by him after his return to civilian life, starts to crumble—with devastating consequences.
Skorobogatov, the author of five critically acclaimed novels, has been published widely in Europe, but Russian Gothic is the first of his works to be translated into English. The UK edition was recently released by Old Street, garnering truly stellar reviews, including in the Telegraph ("thoroughly magnificent") and The Sunday Times ("riveting"). Three decades after it was written, its complex portrait of grief, misogyny, violence—and love—is as fresh, shocking, and relevant as ever.
"Readers won't be able to turn away." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"While themes of sexual jealousy are as old as Ovid, we rarely see partner abuse in adult fiction, and Skorobogatov's complex psychological portrait linking it to the PTSD of war is riveting." —The Sunday Times (UK)
"A violent, drunken, hallucinatory window into post-Soviet fiction." —The Telegraph (UK)
"...there are many things to mark Russian Gothic, the tale of an intense, grief-stricken violent marriage blown apart by jealousy and paranoia, as an exciting prospect." —Big Issue
This information about Russian Gothic 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.
Aleksandr Skorobogatov was born in Grodno in what is now Belorussia. He is one of the most original Russian writers of the post-communist era. An heir to Dostoevsky, Gogol, Bulgakov, Nabokov, Pelevin, and Sorokin—the surreal line of the Russian literary canon—his novels have been published to great acclaim in Russian, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Greek, Serbian, and Spanish. He won the prestigious International Literary Award Città di Penne for the Italian edition of Russian Gothic, which also received the Best Novel of the Year Award from Yunost. Cocaine (2017) won Belgium's Cutting Edge Award for 'Best Book International'. His most recent novel, Raccoon, was published by De Geus in 2020. De Tijd has called Skorobogatov "the best Russian writer of the moment." He lives and works in Belgium.
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