Back to Moscow : A Novel

"THE RARE NOVEL . . . A GENUINE EPIPHANY, WHOLLY EARNED AND WHOLLY UNEXPECTED. WITH ITS FINAL GESTURE, THE STORY REVEALS ITS TRUE SHAPE. IT’S AN ACT OF MAGIC, SUCH A REVELATION, AND ONE THAT I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT."—KEVIN BROCKMEIER, AUTHOR OF THE ILLUMINATION

Tuesday night: vodka and dancing. Wednesday morning: posing as an expert on Pushkin at the university. Thursday night: chasing girls and more vodka. Friday morning: a hungover tour of Gorky’s house.

Martin, a young doctoral student of literature, comes to Moscow hoping to discover the country of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and his beloved Chekhov. Instead, he finds a city turned on its head, where the grimmest vestiges of Soviet life exist side by side with the nonstop hedonism of the newly rich. Along with his hard-living expat friends, Martin spends less time on his studies, pursuing instead the Mysterious Russian Soul in the city’s unhinged nightlife scene.

In quick-witted prose recalling the neurotic openheartedness of Ben Lerner and the whiskey-sour satire of Bret Easton Ellis, Back to Moscow weaves an enthralling coming-of-age tale of debauchery and discovery carved from the corpse of the former USSR—an unforgettable and complexly crafted portrait of a chaotic metropolis storming into the twenty-first century.

"Guillermo Erades savors the sweetness and cruelty of erotic conquest with a candor that rivals Milan Kundera’s, and he tumbles his hero into a sentimental education with a slyness that rivals Chekhov’s."—Caleb Crain, author of Necessary Errors

"Elegant and dramatic, Back to Moscow is a book to get lost in, like a city. A rich and deeply charming debut."—Emma Jane Unsworth, author of Animals

"[A] cleverly satisfying first novel . . . Back to Moscow is quite an imaginative trip."—Charles Larson, CounterPunch

"With hints of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, notes of Gary Shteyngart, and a shadow of Masha Gessen, Erades’s first novel is part frothy concoction and part deadly hemlock."—Library Journal

"Russia’s capital is the most dynamic character in Erades’s boozy bildungsroman."—Publishers Weekly

"One of the book’s strongest suits is its snapshot of Moscow as it descends into the Putin-era free-for-all. Erades shows how the rise of the oligarchs with their ‘black humvees and whores’ supplants the equally dark Soviet past, bringing economic chaos and moral uncertainty. . . . Erades makes this kind of contemplative fiction look easy."—Jude Cook, Litro

"Back to Moscow is a lively and engaging work. Erades develops Martin from being careless with his relationships to finally appreciating a stable one. . . . The tone and feel of much of this recalls . . . Henry Miller's novels Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn."—Sydney Morning Herald

"A coming-of-age novel set in Moscow, Erades' debut plays with tropes of student life, literary devotion, and travel. . . . Erades' structure mimics the movement of Martin through the city, through his life—always yearning yet not always heading in the right direction. An appealingly chaotic—if familiar—look at the inner life of a young 'intellectual.'"—Kirkus Reviews

"Powerful . . . an ambitious debut which . . . chronicles an individual’s struggle to lead a meaningful life."—The Independent UK