Maria Reva – författare

''Bright, funny, satirical and relevant. . . . A new talent to watch!'' MARGARET ATWOOD (via Twitter)This brilliant and bitingly funny novel-in-stories, set in and around a single crumbling apartment building in Soviet-era Ukraine, heralds the arrival of a major new talent.A cast of unforgettable characters--citizens of the small industrial town of Kirovka--populate Maria Reva''s ingeniously entwined tales that span the chaotic years leading up to and immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. Weaving the strands of the narrative together is an unforgettable, chameleon-like young woman named Zaya: an orphan turned beauty-pageant crasher who survives the extraordinary circumstances of her childhood through a compelling combination of ferocity, intelligence, stubbornness and wit.Inspired by her own family''s history, Reva''s Good Citizens Need Not Fear takes us from paranoia to tenderness and back again, exploring what it is to be an individual amid the roiling forces of history.''A comic triumph'' GLOBE AND MAIL''Bang-on brilliant'' MIRIAM TOEWS''Luminous'' YANN MARTEL''Outstanding'' ANTHONY DOERR''Maria Reva''s enthralling debut of interlinked short stories achieves the double effect of timelessness and timeliness'' KAPKA KASSABOVA, GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE DAY

* LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025 *An unforgettable debut novel about the journey of three women and one extremely endangered snail through contemporary Ukraine ''A fierce and funny road-trip novel'' GUARDIAN, the 50 hottest books to read right now ''Inventive and playful'' SUNDAY TIMES''A stunning debut'' OBSERVER''I was gripped . . . Brilliant'' DAILY MAIL''A thrilling ride'' FINANCIAL TIMES ''Brilliant and heart-stopping'' LOS ANGELES TIMES ''Startling and ambitious'' NEW YORK TIMES ''Animated by dark humor and cool fury'' NEW YORKER ''Dexterous and formally inventive'' MARCEL THEROUX, GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE DAY Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a maverick scientist who scours the country''s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails while her relatives urge her to settle down and start a family of her own. What they don''t know: Yeva already dates plenty of men-not for love, but to fund her work-entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they''ll find docile brides untainted by feminism. Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother, who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours. So begins a journey of a lifetime across a country on the brink of war: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species.''Fantastic . . . I love works that are smarter than I am and this is one'' PERCIVAL EVERETT, author of Booker-shortlisted JAMES ''Funny and smart, full of science, longing and adventure . . . This is essential reading'' ANN PATCHETT, bestselling author of TOM LAKE''Heartbreaking, hilarious, profound, and vital'' LARA PRESCOTT, bestselling author of THE SECRETS WE KEEP

A bureaucratic glitch omits an entire building, along with its residents, from municipal records. So begins Reva's "darkly hilarious" (Anthony Doerr) intertwined narratives, nine stories that span the chaotic years leading up to and immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union. But even as the benighted denizens of 1933 Ivansk Street weather the official neglect of the increasingly powerless authorities, they devise ingenious ways to survive. In "Bone Music," an agoraphobic recluse survives by selling contraband LPs, mapping the vinyl grooves of illegal Western records into stolen X-ray film. A delusional secret service agent in "Letter of Apology" becomes convinced he's being covertly recruited to guard Lenin's tomb, just as his parents, not seen since he was a small child, supposedly were. Weaving the narratives together is the unforgettable, chameleon-like Zaya: a cleft-lipped orphan in "Little Rabbit," a beauty-pageant crasher in "Miss USSR," a sadist-for-hire to the Eastern Bloc's newly minted oligarchs in "Homecoming." Good Citizens Need Not Fear tacks from moments of intense paranoia to surprising tenderness and back again, exploring what it is to be an individual amid the roiling forces of history. Inspired by her and her family's own experiences in Ukraine, Reva brings the black absurdism of early Shteyngart and the sly interconnectedness of Anthony Marra's Tsar of Love and Techno to a "bang-on brilliant" (Miriam Toews) collection that is "fearless and thrilling" (Bret Anthony Johnston), and as clever as it is heartfelt.