The Lying Year - Softcover

Gelasimov, Andrei

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1611090717 ISBN 13: 9781611090710

Publisher: Amazon Crossing, 2013

Could have been the blown business deal with the Italians. Could have been the unauthorized office party, which ended with the cops—and then an arrest. No matter what finally got him fired, Mikhail never expected to find himself at Red Star Industries’ office again.

So down-and-out Mikhail is surprised to be called in by old boss Pavel Petrovich, who offers Mikhail easy money and the Land Rover of his dreams to teach his son, Sergei, how to “be a man”—and to spy on him.

Of course, Sergei’s not the Internet-obsessed recluse his father believes. He’s hiding a relationship with the beautiful Marina, who Mikhail himself can’t help but fall for as well. To keep it all together, Mikhail finds himself lying to Petrovich about his son’s activities, lying to Marina about Sergei’s intentions, and lying to Sergei about his love for Marina. So when Sergei’s father invites them all to Italy, the web of lies holding their world together begins to fall apart, and about the time Mikhail finds himself held hostage at gunpoint, he realizes he’s gotten in way over his head...

About the Author:

Andrei Gelasimov was born in Irkutsk in 1965 and studied foreign languages at Yakutsk State University and directing at the Moscow Theater Institute. His first novel, Thirst, garnered the Apollon-Grigoriev Award and was nominated for the Belkin Prize; upon publication in English the Telegraph hailed it as “a haven of both comedy and horror.” Two further novels are forthcoming in English: Gods of the Steppe, winner of the 2009 Russian National Bestseller award, and Rachel, winner of the Booker Student Prize.

Marian Schwartz is an award-winning translator of Russian literature. She is the recipient of two translation fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a past president of the American Literary Translators Association. Her translations include the New York Times bestseller The Last Tsar by Edvard Radzinsky, Andrei Gelasimov’s Thirst, Olga Slavnikova’s 2017, and Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov.

Review:

“A more contemporary Moscow is revealed in one of 2013’s best new novels in translation, Andrei Gelasimov’s The Lying Year, which satirizes the lives of Russia’s new rich. Mikhail Vorobyov’s old boss hires him to look after his teenage son, Sergei, whose own diary entries describe the pain beneath his pampered life. He charts death, abandonment, infidelity and isolation, in a heartbreakingly simple style, laced with the violent, suicidal impulses of youthful disaffection.” —Russia Beyond the Headlines, Great Books of 2013

• Publisher: Amazon Crossing
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1611090717
• ISBN 13: 9781611090710
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328