After Gleb Yanovsky, a celebrated guitarist, is diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at age fifty, he permits a writer, Sergei Nesterov, to pen his biography. For years, they meet regularly as Gleb recounts the life he's lived thus far: a difficult childhood in Kyiv, his formative musical studies in St. Petersburg, and his later years in Munich, where he lives with his wife and meets a thirteen-year-old virtuoso whom he embraces as his own daughter. In a mischievous and tender account, Gleb recalls a personal story of a lifetime quest for meaning, and how the burden of success changes with age.
Expanding the literary universe spun in his earlier novels, Vodolazkin explores music and fame, heritage and belonging, time and memory in this beautifully-wrought and relevant tale that will resonate with fans of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Umberto Eco, and Solzhenitsyn.
At the stunning finale of Brisbane, all the carefully knit stitches unravel into a puzzle: Whose story is it—the subject's or the writer's? Are art and love really no match for death? Is memory a reliable narrator? In Brisbane, the city of our dreams, as in music, Gleb hopes he's found a path to eternity—and a way to stop the clock.
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Eugene Vodolazkin was born in Kiev and has worked in the department of old Russian literature at Pushkin House since 1990. He is an expert in medieval Russian history and folklore. His debut novel, Solovyov and Larionov, was shortlisted for Russia’s National Big Book Award and the Andrei Bely Prize. Laurus, his second novel but the first to be translated into English, won the National Big Book Award and the Yasnaya Polyana Award, was shortlisted for the National Bestseller Prize, the Russian Booker Prize, and the New Literature Award, and has been translated into eighteen languages. His third novel, The Aviator, was also shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize and the Big Book Award.