The Man Who Couldn't Die

Darkly sardonic . . . . oddly timely, for there are all sorts of understated hints about voter fraud, graft, payoffs, and the endless promises of politicians who have no intention of keeping them. It is also deftly constructed, portraying a world and a cast of characters who are caught between the orderly if drab world of old and the chaos of the 'new rich' in a putative democracy. . . . Slavnikova is a writer American readers will want to have more of. * Kirkus Reviews (starred review) * Rather than celebrate the crumbling of walls, Slavnikovas novel shows us all the Lenin statues still in place. It portrays a culture chained to old realities, unable to establish a new understanding of itself. This is a funhouse mirror worth looking into, especially in todays United States with its alternative facts, unpoetic assertions, and morbid relationship with the past. -- Leeore Schnairsohn * Los Angeles Review of Books * The Man Who Couldnt Die, lucidly translated by Marian Schwartz, will resound with American readers. Bristling with voter fraud, fake news, and the cozy top-and-tail of media moguls and politicians, Slavnikovas book is fluent in new language of the damaged reality principle. -- Olivia Parkes * The Baffler * The Man Who Couldnt Die is a Gogolian portrait of the Kharitonovs, a Moscow family who 'had not been handed any party favors at capitalisms kiddie party' after the fall of the Soviet Union. -- Natasha Randall * Times Literary Supplement * The Man Who Couldnt Die is an overlooked masterpiece of post-Soviet prose by one of contemporary Russias most important authors. It reveals how Slavnikovas descriptions (and Schwartzs English equivalent) belong alongside those of Vladimir Nabokov, Iurii Olesha, and Nikolai Gogol as truly revolutionary in Russian prose. -- Benjamin Sutcliffe, Miami University The Man Who Couldnt Die is a wonderful depiction of a society in flux, and of the people caught up in these waves of change. * Tony's Reading List *

Olga Slavnikova was born in 1957 in Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg). She is the author of several award-winning novels, including 2017, which won the 2006 Russian Booker prize and was translated into English by Marian Schwartz (2010), and Long Jump, which won the 2018 Yasnaya Polyana Award. Marian Schwartz translates Russian contemporary and classic fiction, including Tolstoys Anna Karenina, and is the principal translator of Nina Berberova.

Introduction by Mark Lipovetsky The Man Who Couldnt Die