Bøger af Keith Gessen

From its first shock waves in 2008, the Great Recession has been reshaping American cities. Detroit collapsed, and the ongoing national rollback in industry has meant the death of factory towns like Greensboro, North Carolina and Reading, Pennsylvania. But the effects of the crash have been far from uniform. The populations of gentrifying cities such as San Francisco and Brooklyn continue to expand, with rents soaring and neighborhood demographics changing overnight. Providence, Rhode Island is experiencing a civic renaissance that disguises lingering corruption in its political system. The two hundred citizens of Whittier, Alaska, have been approached about starring in a reality TV show. And racial profiling by police in cities like Cincinnati, Palm Coast, and Baltimore has set the stage for protests that have swept the nation. City by City, edited by Keith Gessen and Stephen Squibb, is a collection of essays from a new generation of writers working to document the places they call home. With the specificity of Studs Terkel and the humor of Hunter S. Thompson, they capture the forces-gentrification, underemployment, politics, culture, and crime-that are changing the lives of their neighborhoods, their neighbors, and themselves.

'Gessen is a calm and observant writer - if he were a singer, he'd always come in a bit behind the beat - who raises, and struggles with, the right questions about himself and the world'Dwight Garner, New York Times'I didn't know I was waiting for a book like this until I read it. Raising Raffi is original, funny, and full of heart'Daniel Alarcon, author of At Night We Walk in CirclesKeith Gessen had always assumed that he would have kids, but couldn't imagine what parenthood would be like, nor what kind of parent he would be. Then, one Tuesday night in early June, Raffi was born, a child as real and complex and demanding of his parents' energy as he was singularly magical. Fatherhood is another country: a place where the old concerns are swept away, where the ordering of time is reconstituted, where days unfold according to a child's needs. Like all parents, Gessen wants to do what is best for his child. But he has no idea what that is. Written over the first five years of Raffi's life, Raising Raffi examines the profound, overwhelming, often maddening experience of being a dad. How do you instil in your child a sense of his heritage without passing on that history's darker sides? Is parental anger normal, possibly useful, or is it inevitably destructive? And what do you do, in a pandemic, when the whole world seems to fall apart? By turns hilarious and poignant, Raising Raffi is a story of what it means to invent the world anew.

A novel of love, sadness, wasted youth, and literary and intellectual ambition-"e;a wincingly funny debut"e; (Vogue) Keith Gessen is a Brave and trenchant new literary voice. Known as an award-winning translator of Russian and a book reviewer for publications including The New Yorker and The New York Times, Gessen makes his debut with this critically acclaimed novel, a charming yet scathing portrait of young adulthood at the opening of the twenty-first century. The novel charts the lives of Sam, Mark, and Keith as they overthink their college years, underthink their love lives, and struggle to find a semblance of maturity, responsibility, and even literary fame.

A New York Times Editors' ChoiceNamed a Best Book of 2018 byBookforum,Nylon,Esquire,andVulture"e;This artful and autumnal novel, published in high summer, is a gift to those who wish to receive it."e;Dwight Garner, The New York Times"e;Hilarious, heartbreaking . . . A Terrible Country may be one of the best books you'll read this year."e;Ann Levin, Associated Press"e;The funniest work of fiction I've read this year."e;Christian Lorentzen, Vulture.comA literary triumph about Russia, family, love, and loyaltythe first novel in ten years from a founding editor of n+1 and author of All the Sad Young Literary MenWhen Andrei Kaplan's older brother Dima insists that Andrei return to Moscow to care for their ailing grandmother, Andrei must take stock of his life in New York. His girlfriend has stopped returning his text messages. His dissertation adviser is dubious about his job prospects. It's the summer of 2008, and his bank account is running dangerously low. Perhaps a few months in Moscow are just what he needs. So Andrei sublets his room in Brooklyn, packs up his hockey stuff, and moves into the apartment that Stalin himself had given his grandmother, a woman who has outlived her husband and most of her friends. She survived the dark days of communism and witnessed Russia's violent capitalist transformation, during which she lost her beloved dacha. She welcomes Andrei into her home, even if she can't always remember who he is.Andrei learns to navigate Putin's Moscow, still the city of his birth, but with more expensive coffee. He looks after his elderlybut surprisingly sharp!grandmother, finds a place to play hockey, a cafe to send emails, and eventually some friends, including a beautiful young activist named Yulia. Over the course of the year, his grandmother's health declines and his feelings of dislocation from both Russia and America deepen. Andrei knows he must reckon with his future and make choices that will determine his life and fate. When he becomes entangled with a group of leftists, Andrei's politics and his allegiances are tested, and he is forced to come to terms with the Russian society he was born into and the American one he has enjoyed since he was a kid.A wise, sensitive novel about Russia, exile, family, love, history and fate, A Terrible County asks what you owe the place you were born, and what it owes you. Writing with grace and humor, Keith Gessen gives us a brilliant and mature novel that is sure to mark him as one of the most talented novelists of his generation.

A portrait of young adulthood at the opening of the twenty-first century that charts the lives of Sam, Mark, and Keith, as they overthink their college years, underthink their love lives, and struggle through the encouragement of the women who love and despise them to find a semblance of maturity, responsibility, and even literary fame.