The Dream Life of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin

Presentation Date: 

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

This session, focusing on The Dream Life of Sukhanov, was hosted on November 13, 2013 by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. It featured the novel's author, Olga Grushin.

View a recording of the session here: http://cmes.adobeconnect.com/p19rulo7ln6/

The story of Anatoly Sukhanov, who many years before abandoned the precarious existence of an underground artist for the perks of a Soviet apparatchik. But, at the age of 56, his perfect life is suddenly disintegrating. Buried dreams return to haunt him. New political alignments threaten to undo him. Vaulting effortlessly from the real to the surreal and from privilege to paranoia, The Dream Life of Sukhanov is a darkly funny novel.

About the author: Olga Grushin is the author of the novels The Line (2010, published in the UK as The Concert Ticket) and The Dream Life of Sukhanov (2006), as well as short stories, literary criticism, essays, and other works. She has been awarded the 2007 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and named one of the Best Young American Novelists by Granta magazine. Her work has been translated into fifteen languages. Grushin's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Granta, The Guardian, The Observer, Partisan Review, Vogue, and other publications.