A Terrible Country

Keith Gessen's novel opens in the summer of 2008, when Dima Kaplan insists that his younger brother, Andrei, go back to Moscow to look after their ailing grandmother. In New York, Andrei's girlfriend has stopped answering his texts, his dissertation adviser doubts his job prospects and his bank account is nearly empty. So he sublets his Brooklyn room, packs his hockey gear and moves into the apartment Stalin gave his grandmother, who lived through communism and lost her dacha in Russia's violent turn to capitalism, and who cannot always remember who he is. In Putin's Moscow he finds hockey games, a cafe where he can send email, and friends including Yulia, a young activist.

Dmitry Dragilev, founder of JustReachOut, called it one of his favorite books.