Join Us for the next Morning Book Club on Thursday, September 19th at 10:30 AM. We will be discussing The Dream Life of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin.
“An absorbing novel of scope and ambition. In the Russian high-art tradition within which The Dream Life of Sukhanov situates itself, the psychology of the individual under extreme stress is rendered political, the political then woven back into the seams of one life, until the mindscape of Russia, the end-game of Soviet power and the slow demolition of career, family and mind resonate in every sentence. This is no mean feat. To accomplish it while simultaneously updating Bulgakov’s seminal Master and Margarita . . . providing a mini-tour of the Soviet arts bureaucracy from Chagall and Kandinsky through the Khrushchev-Brezhnev thaw-refreeze to the early glimmerings of perestroika; evoking a dozen convincing characters; nailing the social and sensual realm of 1980s Moscow; and meditating on grand themes of personal versus political versus artistic betrayal and the fine lines between ambition and ruthlessness, imagination and madness; all the while maintaining narrative drive and a delicate surface tension between dream world and reality via multiple narrative perspectives and time schemes – that is remarkable.” — The New York Times Book Review