Throughout the madcap plotting, a pervasive sense of menace never dissipates. An international comedy of errors that ventures to knowingly bleak places.” —Kirkus starred review
“In vertiginous scenes that evoke Kafka, Dostoyevsky, and Alice in Wonderland, the police and prison officials subject David to extortion, drugging, and interrogation, and even Putin himself gets a cartoonish and nightmarish cameo. Not only is this sickeningly surreal, it’s a hell of a ride.” —Publishers Weekly starred review
“Josip Novakovich’s latest novel is a tour de force that exposes the complete corruption of the Russian police and legal system under Putin. David Dvornik is an insomniac, former investment banker, Russophile, amateur historian, and ex graduate student from Yale, who uses sarcasm and farce to describe the absurdity of his daily life in Saint Petersburg. Novakovich turns the idea of Crime and Punishment on its head. Rather than the inevitable capture of the guilty, we see the inevitable punishment of the innocent.”
—Josh Barkan, author of Mexico: Stories
“Crime and the lack of punishment—Josip Novakovich conjures up a picture of Saint Petersburg that would terrify Dostoevsky.” —Tibor Fischer, author of Under the Frog
“Rubble of Rubbles shows Josip Novakovich at his best. I know of no other writer who knows how to ridicule the ridiculous and find meaning in the seemingly meaningless. This is a comic novel with serious content, rich in dark humor and startling cultural insights.” —Jim Heynen, author of The One-Room Schoolhouse
“This novel took hold of me from the beginning and never let go. Kafkaesque for the first two-thirds, and then something else. I am not sure what: maybe a bit of the Wizard of Oz, and a bit Hitchcock, with a happy ending. I shall never think of Russia the same way, or of Georgian wine. A timely book filled with humor and twists and turns.” —Robert Appelbaum, author of Terrorism Before the Letter: Mythography and Political Violence in England, Scotland, and France 1559-1642
“In a thrilling mix of an adventure novel and satire, Novakovich provides us with a fresh glimpse into that horrifying and mysterious Russian soul. So relevant that it’s scary!” —Lara Vapnyar, author of Divide Me By Zero
“Josip Novakovich's narrative style—powerfully direct, crisply precise, bluntly confident without arrogance—is instantly recognizable and entirely sui generis. No single sentence goes to waste in his texts, no word a throwaway one. His prose resonates with distant rhythms of faraway histories. He is one of the preeminent storytellers of our time—and one of the very best we have. In this remarkable, highly immersive novel, set in early-aughts Russia poised on the cusp of becoming the moral catastrophe of a state it is today, his satire is cutting and unswerving, his gaze steadfast and uncommonly, uncannily observant.” —Mikhail Iossel, author of Every Hunter Wants to Know
★ 2022-09-28
A would-be wine importer finds himself enmeshed in a Russian espionage plot.
In the wake of turmoil in both his personal and professional lives, an American man named David travels to Russia in the mid-2000s seeking to start a new career as a wine importer. Readers expecting a predictable story of a midlife crisis abroad will be surprised by where Novakovich’s novel heads. As David observes at one point, “My love of Russia was an illness, a self-destructive vortex”—and that vortex takes him to some decidedly strange places. An arrest for public urination finds David in an increasingly high-stakes legal nightmare, one in which he is imprisoned and regularly shaken down for bribes. (A confirmed bibliophile, David frequently comments on the limited selection of books available to him in prison.) At one point, David raises the possibility of his meeting Vladimir Putin when talking with the prison’s warden: “There could be several novels about Putin. Maybe a trilogy? Putin’s judo youth, Putin in DDR, Putin in Grozny. Can I talk to him?” And then Putin shows up, trying out judo moves on the residents of the prison, and becomes convinced that David would be the perfect person to carry out a sinister mission overseas. David tries to explore the possibility of a nonviolent task instead—“You know, I’d rather not kill anybody. Could I just interview you and publish your biography?”—but is rebuffed and finds himself en route to Georgia. “Maybe I could consider myself an FSB agent? Maybe I was?” he ponders. But throughout the madcap plotting, a pervasive sense of menace never dissipates.
An international comedy of errors that ventures to knowingly bleak places.
