Free World: A Novel - Couverture souple

Superb ... a major new talent (Independent)

Wonderfully uplifting (The Times)

Terrific ... Combines comic brilliance with a poignant portrait of a family trapped between two worlds (Sunday Times)

Colourful, sharply funny and deeply moving (Financial Times)

Alternately comic, sharp and sombre ... it's impossible not to be caught up in the tangled web of its unforgettable case (Daily Mail)

A proper novel that bulges and pulses and thrums with life ... I ended up loving it ... The principal tone is wry - mainly comedic, sometimes melancholic, occasionally tragic, ironical, playful, charming ... a rich and occasionally brilliant novel [that] is well worth reading (Observer)

David Bezmozgis projects a sense of ease that is very rare in first novels; he does everything well (Telegraph)

Self-assured, elegant and perceptive ... [his] taut 2004 debut collection Natasha and Other Stories suggested that he might well be of those authors' [Philip Roth and Leonard Michaels] caliber; The Free World goes a long way toward confirming this status (The New York Times)

Heavy with the consciousness of time, the inevitability of crises. Bezmozgis has the knack of ending scenes, chapters, especially, at the perfect reverberant moment, plangent or ironic (Guardian)

Delivered in an understated style which can accommodate serious subtext as well as ironical humour ... His portraits of the family circle are neatly rendered and compassionate ... There is no doubt Bezmozgis remains a writer worth monitoring (Independent on Sunday)

2011 Governor General’s Literary Awards Finalist - Fiction

Shortlisted for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize

It is August 1978. Brezhnev sits like a stone in the Kremlin and nuclear missiles stand primed in the Siberian silos. The Iron Curtain divides East from West as three generations of the Krasnansky family leave the Soviet Union to get their first taste of freedom. Choosing Canada rather than Israel as their destination, the Krasnanskys find themselves on an enforced holiday in Italy with thousands of other Russian Jewish immigrants all facing an uncertain future. Together the irresistible and quarrelsome Krasnanskys will spend six months in Rome, where they will immerse themselves in the carnival of emigration, in an Italy rife with love affairs and ruthless hustles, with the promise and peril of a new life.

Writing in precise, musical prose, David Bezmozgis has created an intimate portrait of a tumultuous era, confirming his reputation as one of our most mature and accomplished storytellers.