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From the New York Times bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Family Foundation Prize for Fiction, 2015
National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist in Fiction
Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Books of 2015

“Audacious… [an] ambitious and fearless [book], one that offers so much to enjoy and admire…Marra’s far-ranging, risky and explicitly political book marks him as a writer with an original, even singular sensibility.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Genius…what makes this (dare I say) masterpiece so stunning is Marra’s clear love for his subject and insistence on infusing beauty into even the darkest places…It’s nothing short of extraordinary.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“Powerful…[an] ingenious book.”
—Wall Street Journal

“Marra’s nine stories, cunningly set out like strewn mosaic tiles that keep self-rearranging until they cohere into a complex, cathartic whole, demand to be read in order…Marra here emerges with an oxygenizing wisdom and an arsenal of wit as inexhaustible as it is unlikely.”
—Boston Globe

“Marra, in between bursts of acidic humor, summons the terror, polluted landscapes, and diminished hopes of generations of Russians in a tragic and haunting collection.”
—Booklist (starred)

“With generosity of spirit and a surprising dash of humor, these artfully woven narratives coalesce into a majestic whole.”
—Library Journal (starred)

“Powerful…strikingly reimagines a nearly a century of changes in Russia. [T]he book’s brilliance and humor are laced with the somber feeling that the country is allergic to evolution.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“As in his acclaimed novel, Marra finds in Chechnya an inspiration for his uniquely funny, tragic, bizarre, and memorable fiction.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)

“Treat yourself to these wise works of art set in Siberia, the USSR, and the heart.”
—Refinery29

 

 

 

 

From the New York Times bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena—dazzling, poignant, and lyrical interwoven stories about family, sacrifice, the legacy of war, and the redemptive power of art.

This stunning, exquisitely written collection introduces a cast of remarkable characters whose lives intersect in ways both life-affirming and heartbreaking. A 1930s Soviet censor painstakingly corrects offending photographs, deep underneath Leningrad, bewitched by the image of a disgraced prima ballerina. A chorus of women recount their stories and those of their grandmothers, former gulag prisoners who settled their Siberian mining town. Two pairs of brothers share a fierce, protective love. Young men across the former USSR face violence at home and in the military. And great sacrifices are made in the name of an oil landscape unremarkable except for the almost incomprehensibly peaceful past it depicts. In stunning prose, with rich character portraits and a sense of history reverberating into the present, The Tsar of Love and Techno is a captivating work from one of our greatest new talents.

 

About the Author

ANTHONY MARRA is the author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (2013), which won the National Book Critics Circle’s inaugural John Leonard Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in fiction, and the Barnes and Noble Fiction Discover Award and appeared on more than twenty year-end lists. Marra’s novel was a National Book Award longlist selection, and abroad it won the Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle in France and the Athens Prize for Literature in Greece. A Guggenheim Fellow and Whiting Award recipient, he lives in Oakland, California, and teaches at Stanford University. Marra has reviewed and written for the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic. Visit http://anthonymarra.net/.

 

 

 

 

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