"Summer, 1978. Brezhnev sits like a stone
in the Kremlin, Israel and Egypt are inching towards peace, and in the
bustling, polyglot streets of Rome,
strange new creatures have appeared: Soviet Jews who have escaped to freedom
through a crack in the Iron Curtain. Among the thousands who have landed in Italy to secure
visas for new lives in the West are the members of the Krasnansky family —
three generations of Russian Jews. There is Samuil, an old Communist and Red
Army veteran, who reluctantly leaves the country to which he has dedicated
himself body and soul; Karl, his elder son, a man eager to embrace the
opportunities emigration affords; Alec, his younger son, a carefree playboy for
whom life has always been a game; and Polina, Alec's new wife, who has risked
the most by breaking with her old family to join this new one. Together, they
will spend six months in Rome
— their way station and purgatory. They will immerse themselves in the carnival
of emigration, in an Italy
rife with love affairs and ruthless hustles, with dislocation and nostalgia,
with the promise and peril of a new life. Through the unforgettable Krasnansky
family, David Bezmozgis has created an intimate portrait of a tumultuous era. Written
in precise, musical prose, The Free World is a stunning debut novel, a
heartfelt multigenerational saga of great historical scope and even greater
human debth. Enlarging on the themes of aspiration and exile that infused his
critically acclaimed first collection, Natasha and Other Stories, The Free
World establishes Bezmozgis as one of our most mature and accomplished
storytellers..”
