Longlisted for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award
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Winner of the Ivo Andric Grand Prize for best novel of 2022
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From the INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR Eugene Vodolazkin - winner
of the BIG BOOK AWARD, the LEO TOLSTOY YASNAYA POLYANA AWARD, and the
READ RUSSIA AWARD
For fans of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Umberto Eco
Vodolazkin's new novel Brisbane is "a sophisticated and frequently
moving study in dissonance, dedicated to pointing out contrasts between
art and life, beauty and decay, intention and outcome. And, yes, between
Ukraine and Russia" (Booklist).
Brisbane is a richly layered, universal coming-of-age story of a
musical prodigy robbed of his talent by an incurable disease who
attempts to overcome his mortality. After Gleb Yanovsky, a celebrated
guitarist, is diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at age fifty, he
permits a writer, Sergei Nesterov, to pen his biography. For years, they
meet regularly as Gleb recounts the life he's lived thus far: a
difficult childhood in Kyiv, his formative musical studies in St.
Petersburg, and his later years in Munich, where he lives with his wife
and meets a thirteen-year-old virtuoso whom he embraces as his own
daughter. In a mischievous and tender account, Gleb recalls a personal
story of a lifetime quest for meaning, and how the burden of success
changes with age.
Expanding the literary universe spun in his earlier novels, Vodolazkin
explores music and fame, heritage and belonging, time and memory in this
beautifully-wrought and relevant tale that carefully unravel into a
puzzle: Whose story is it - the subject's or the writer's? Are art and
love really no match for death? Is memory a reliable narrator? In
Brisbane, the city of our dreams, as in music, Gleb hopes he's
found a path to eternity - and a way to stop the clock.
