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A gripping novel about the dangers and draws of contemporary Russia?from the author of The Geographer?s Library
With The Geographer?s Library, Jon Fasman made an ?inventive and spirited? debut (The New Yorker) that landed him on The New York Times bestseller list. Every bit as dazzling, The Unpossessed City takes readers into the Wild East that is Russia today. There we meet Jim Vilatzer?an American expat whose Russian language skills land him a job interviewing former inmates of the Gulag and ensnare him in a web of deceit involving the CIA, Russia?s Interior Ministry, and Central Asian arms dealers selling the most dangerous technologies to the highest bidder. From its brooding portrayal of Moscow to its riveting pace, The Unpossessed City is an atmospheric triumph in the tradition of Donna Leon?s novels of Venice.
Bestseller Fasman, whose well-received debut, The Geographer's Library(2005), was set in Da Vinci Code territory, takes a compassionate look at the hard truths of modern-day Russia in his absorbing second novel. After a failed romance, 32-year-old Jim Vilatzer is working in his father's Rockville, Md., restaurant, trying to earn enough cash to pay off a $24,000 gambling debt. In an attempt to earn more money, Jim uses his Russian language skills learned in college to get a job in Moscow with the Memory Foundation to interview and record the stories of former political prisoners. A series of interviews draws him into a far-reaching scheme involving the abduction of retired Russian nuclear and biotech scientists. The bio-thriller aspect of the plot provides a loose frame for Fasman's real concerns: Jim's personal, romantic and espionage relationships and, more importantly, the trials and tribulations of the new Russia itself. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.At 32, Jim Vilatzer is saddled with gambling debts that will take him years to pay off, especially if he continues working at his parents' restaurant, which is all he knows. He needs a fresh start. Relying on Russian-language skills learned from his immigrant grandparents, he accepts a job in Moscow interviewing survivors of the Gulag for an organization called the Memory Foundation. Jim is oddly rejuvenated by the grim city, and he discovers that he is a natural interviewer. To his colleagues' amazement, Jim finds and debriefs an impressive number of survivors, and he falls in love with the granddaughter of one of these men. Then he realizes that he is being followed, both by Russian agents and by the CIA. Fasman's second novel (after The Geographer's Library) combines elements of the coming-of-age story, the immigrant family saga, and the political thriller. There is enough material for two books, but the disparate parts don't mesh, and Fasman's frantic conclusion seems forced. Nevertheless, this book will have strong appeal to those interested in a portrait of modern Russia. Recommended for larger fiction collections.
—Edward B. St. John
Fleeing gambling debts and a messy life in the unglamorous D.C. suburbs, a likable loser goes to Moscow to seek, if not his fortune, perhaps a future.
If Fasman (The Geographer's Library, 2005) was worried about the second-novel syndrome, he needn't have been. This adventure of a man who has no business having adventures is a pleasure for most of its length, stumbling only occasionally as the author tries to get a grip on the technicalities of the spy thriller formula on which he has hung his shambling, gauche, goofy love letter to Moscow. His hero is Jim Vilatzer, only child of a Russian father and Irish mother whose strip-mall deli in Rockville, Md., provides their son with not nearly enough income to pay off the Serbian gangsters running the poker games where Jim has run up a tab of about $24,000. It was bad enough for Jim that he had been dumped by his girlfriend, bad enough that he was living with his parents years after he should have started a family, but to have screwed up so badly as to put his parents' livelihood in peril, that's the outside of enough. Thank goodness his lifelong friend Vivek, another child of immigrants, has the common sense to arrange a repayment plan, a course of action that sends Jim out of the country to one of his ancestral homelands, where he will be safely out of reach of the Serbians. It's not an insane plan; Jim speaks pretty good Russian, enough to get him a job at a sort of minor NGO where he's to spend his days collecting oral histories of life in the gulags and falling in love with Moscow. It's slow getting started, but then a sensational hookup with a gorgeous Finn finally sets him on the track of survivors who, alas, are not all theyseem to be. They do seem to be of great interest to American intelligence.
Great fun in a great, if grim, place.
Agent: Jim Rutman/Sterling Lord Literistic
Anonymous
Posted January 15, 2011
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Anonymous
Posted July 13, 2010
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Anonymous
Posted March 19, 2011
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Overview
A gripping novel about the dangers and draws of contemporary Russia?from the author of The Geographer?s Library
With The Geographer?s Library, Jon Fasman made an ?inventive and spirited? debut (The New Yorker) that landed him on The New York Times bestseller list. Every bit as dazzling, The Unpossessed City takes readers into the Wild East that is Russia today. There we meet Jim Vilatzer?an American expat whose Russian language skills land him a job interviewing former inmates of the Gulag and ensnare him in a web of deceit involving the CIA, Russia?s Interior Ministry, and Central Asian arms dealers selling the most dangerous technologies to the highest...