David Bezmozgis - Natasha and Other Stories

“What sets [Bezmozgis] apart … is his quiet command of unadorned language, his wry humour and his keen understanding of the human heart.”

— Winnipeg Free Press

“Extraordinary…. [Recalls] the work of Babel, Roth, Saul Bellow, and so many others. Yet Bezmozgis makes these characters, and the state of marginality itself, uniquely his. This hysterical, merciless, yet open-hearted excavation of a Jewish family in the process of assimilating gives his literary predecessors a run for their money.”

— Los Angeles Times Book Review

“An authority one usually finds only in more seasoned writers.”

— The New York Times Book Review

“An effervescent debut…. A familiar tale of dislocation and assimilation with enough humor, honesty, and courage to make it new again…. If the last page of ‘Tapka’ doesn’t stop your heart, maybe it was never really beating.”

— O Magazine

“Exquisitely crafted stories. A first collection that reads like the work of a past master.”

— T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE, author of Drop City

“[Bezmozgis] is expert at prodding forward his stories with unexpected exoticisms…. Passionately full of life … ebullient and warmly comic.”

— London Review of Books

“The hype is well-deserved…. All of these spare, expertly crafted, memorably moving tales about Jewish immigrant life in contemporary Toronto contain truths of which it is exhilarating to be reminded — about striving, living, and dying in a new free world that is as harsh and bewildering as it is beautiful and exciting.”

— Elle Magazine

“Here in Europe the talk this year has been all about the new writing coming out of Russia. David Bezmozgis shows that this energy extends to the Russian Diaspora as well. In Natasha and Other Stories Bezmozgis renders something of the clear-sighted melancholy associated with Chekov or Babel into English prose and a North American context. With a maturity and control far beyond his years, Mr. Bezmozgis has produced a captivating and impressive debut. The title story itself is one I will never forget.”

— JEFFREY EUGENIDES, author of Middlesex

“Scary good…. Not a line or note in the book rings false.”

— Esquire

“A latter-day Bernard Malamud…. It’s astonishing how Bezmozgis can summon up the émigré community with such clarity and economy. David Bezmozgis isn’t almost there. He has arrived, fully mature and wise. These stories aren’t just superbly crafted investigations of a particular people and place, but profound illuminations of what it means to grow up in an uncertain, ever-changing world.”

— Newsday

“A stunning first collection, characterized by a painful honesty and clarity of vision…. Like Gogol, Bezmozgis is acutely aware of his characters’ shortcomings; as Gogol does, Bezmozgis writes with compassion, quietly reminding us of the hidden beauty within human imperfection.”

— The Believer

“Dazzling, hilarious and hugely compassionate narratives [written with] freshness and precision…. Readers will find themselves laughing out loud, then gasping as Bezmozgis brings these fictions to the searing, startling and perfectly pitched conclusions that remind us that, as Babel said, ‘no iron can stab the heart so powerfully as a period put in exactly the right place.’”

— People