The Year of the Comet

Description

From the critically acclaimed author of Oblivion comes Year of the Comet, a story of a Russian boyhood and coming of age as the Soviet Union is on the brink of collapse. An idyllic childhood takes a sinister turn. Rumours of a serial killer haunt the neighbourhood, families pack up and leave town without a word of warning, and the country begins to unravel. Policemen stand by as protesters overtake the streets, knowing that the once awe-inspiring symbols of power they wear on their helmets have become devoid of meaning. Lebedev depicts a vast empire coming apart at the seams, transforming a very public moment into something tender and personal, and writes with stunning beauty and shattering insight about childhood and the growing consciousness of a boy in the world.

Sergei Lebedev was born in Moscow in 1981 and worked for seven years on geological expeditions in northern Russia and Central Asia. Lebedev is a poet, essayist and journalist. His novels have been translated into many languages and received great acclaim in the English-speaking world. The New York Review of Books has hailed Lebedev as 'the best of Russia's younger generation of writers'. Antonina W. Bouis is one of the leading translators of Russian literature working today. She has translated over 80 works from authors such as Evgeny Yevtushenko, Mikhail Bulgakov, Andrei Sakharov, Sergei Dovlatov and Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Bouis, previously executive director of the Soros Foundation in the former USSR, lives in New York City.

Examines the psychological trauma Stalinism continues to unleash - even on those who never lived during his reign... Antonina W. Bouis has translated the best of Soviet and post-Soviet writings [...] and the ease with which she renders Mr. Lebedev's prose creates the illusion that both his novels were originally written in English' * Wall Street Journal * Depicts objects in a stunningly, almost freakishly precise way, coaxing the metaphysical to express itself through the material... In The Year of the Comet, coming of age is not about first love, or the discovery of sexuality, it is rather about the fatefulness of action' * Times Literary Supplement * The Year of the Comet is a touching portrait of bonds that span generations * World Literature Today * This gorgeously written, unsettling novel - a rare work about the fall of the Soviet Union as told through the eyes of a child - leaves us with a fresh understanding of that towering moment in recent history * Kirkus Reviews * This is a smart, convincing, and affecting novel * Publishers Weekly *