“An impressively accomplished retelling of the Gatsby story,” in which a Russian businessman engages an impoverished bookseller’s help pursuing a lover. (Los Angeles Review of Books)
On a rainy afternoon in London’s old Chelsea, a charming multi-billionaire Russian oligarch, Gorsky, walks into an ailing bookshop and writes the first of several quarter-of-a-million pound checks. With that money, Gorsky has tasked Nikola, the store’s bored and brilliant clerk, with sourcing books for a massive personal library, which will be housed in the magnificent, palatial home Gorsky happens to be building immediately next to Nikola’s own modest dwelling. Gorsky needs a tasteful collection of Russian literature to woo a long-lost love―no matter that she happens to be married to an Englishman. His passion for her surpasses even his immeasurable wealth, and Nikola will be drawn into a world of opulence, greed, capitalism, sex, and beauty as he helps Gorsky pursue this doomed love.
“An accomplished retelling of an American classic.” —Tablet
“It’s a very clever idea: to update «The Great Gatsby” by making the bootlegger into a Russian arms-dealing billionaire and transplanting the action from Jazz Age New York to 21st-century London, a city increasingly shaped by global wealth.” —The New York Times Book Review
“A tense, witty page-turner.” —The Spectator
“Entertaining.” —New York Journal of Books
“[A] kind of novel-length love letter to the written word.” —Jewish Book Council
