Мария Кузнецова - Something Unbelievable

This novel wouldn’t have been written if my grandmother, Lana, hadn’t stoked my imagination with stories of her Soviet upbringing. After she passed away five years ago, her sister, Tanya, and niece, Natasha, continued to tell me stories that kept me going. My parents, Olga and Alex, read through several drafts of this book and gave thoughtful feedback about historical inaccuracies, and I am very grateful to them for this, and for raising me to be fascinated by the place we came from, and so much more. My brother, Andrew, supported me in countless ways as well.

I’d also like to thank everyone at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, which made it possible for me to share a short version of this project in Ethan Canin’s Long Story Workshop. Ethan and my sharp classmates helped shape the project and made me see that it had potential to be a novel. My agent, Henry Dunow, read many drafts of this novel and put it in good hands, keeping me sane along the way, and Andrea Walker and Emma Caruso, my tireless editors, helped it find its final form. Emma was a superhero, particularly in the home stretch of this project. Jess Bonet and Carrie Neill were always there to answer my endless questions and helped in endless ways. Cindy Berman helped this book fall into place.

My husband, Danny, offered tremendous support to me as I plugged on with this project in ways that leave me speechless. And my daughter, Dasha, kept my spirits high as I wrote, both in utero and in this unbelievable world.

Oksana, Behave!

Something Unbelievable

Maria Kuznetsova was born in Kiev, Ukraine, and moved to the United States as a child. Her first novel, Oksana, Behave!, was published in 2019. She lives in Auburn, Alabama, with her husband and daughter, where she is an assistant professor of creative writing at Auburn University. She is also a fiction editor at The Bare Life Review, a journal of immigrant and refugee literature.

Something Unbelievable is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2021 by Maria Kuznetsova

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Random House and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kuznetsova, Maria, author.

Title: Something unbelievable: a novel / Maria Kuznetsova.

Description: First edition. | New York: Random House, [2021]

Identifiers: LCCN 2020014097 (print) | LCCN 2020014098 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525511908 (hardcover: acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780525511915 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Domestic fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3611.U985 S66 2021 (print) | LCC PS3611.U985 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020014097

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​202001

Ebook ISBN 9780525511915

randomhousebooks.com

Title-page and part-title art: © iStockphoto.com

Book design by Dana Leigh Blanchette, adapted for ebook

Cover design: Na Kim

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