The Dream Life of Sukhanov

everywhere.”

— Dan Cryer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Subtle and vertiginous.”

— The New York Times Book Review

“Sukhanov ends the novel as a species of holy fool. In mad times, madness is a perfectly authentic response. But he is true to his vision at last, and Grushin has been true to hers.”

— The Observer (London)

“Brilliant work from a newcomer who is already an estimable American writer.”

— Kirkus Reviews

“The Dream Life of Sukhanov is Olga Grushin’s first novel, although you’d never guess it…. Evoking a time and place vivid in its particulars, Grushin draws universal lessons, an achievement made all the more impressive by the fact that English isn’t her native language.”

— Bloomberg.com

“Sinuous prose that shifts seamlessly from third to first person, between present and past, in and out of dreams and hallucinations… in Grushin’s wonderful novel, the incandescent wealth of Russia’s literary heritage blazes.”

— Daily Telegraph (London)

“Olga Grushin’s hallucinatory tale of a member of the Soviet privilegentsia discovering the price of his pact with the devil boldly collapses past into present, dream into reality, bitterness into sweetness, rising to heights of artful virtuosity rare in any book, let alone a first novel. Steeped in the tradition of Gogol, Bulgakov, and Nabokov, Grushin is clearly a writer of large and original talent.”

— James Lasdun

“The Dream Life of Sukhanov will tower over the majority of what publishers put out this year. Grushin’s beautifully constructed puzzle is a triumph of singular yet universal genius.”

— New York Magazine

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in 1971 in Moscow, Olga Grushin did her early schooling in Prague. She returned to Moscow in 1981 and later studied art history at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and journalism at Moscow State University. In 1989, she was given a full scholarship to Emory University.

She has been a researcher and an interpreter at the Carter Center and an editor at Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Her short fiction has appeared in Partisan Review, The Massachusetts Review, Confrontation, and Art Times.

The Dream Life of Sukhanov is her first novel. It was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Fiction Award and for the U.K.’s Orange Award for New Writers.

Grushin, who became a U.S. citizen in 2002, lives outside Washington, D.C., with her husband and their son. 

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,

Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pry Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi, 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany,

Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a member of the Penguin Group 2005

Published in Penguin Books 2007

Copyright © Olga Grushin, 2005

All rights reserved

The author is indebted to John E. Bowlt’s Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism, 1902-1934 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1988) for the quotation from The Golden Fleece (attributed here to The World of Art), and to Rimma Gerlovina’s three-dimensional poems for the description of the cube-shaped artwork.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

eISBN : 978-1-101-07798-6

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate In or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s