The Free World

I m not putting any stars up on this book I don t think it s fair since I could not go on with it I listened to most of the audio book before I lost the will to live I decided to give up with 3 hours left because life is short and there are so many good books out there but I tried, I really did.I was so bored with this It s about some people, not sure who was who, emigrating from the Soviet Union to the U.S and Canada via Rome It was so mundane.It went something like this Boris Paulina, did you [...]

Brilliant social novel, a pleasure to read Excellent development of the characters and their motivations.Again I am liking a book about characters some of them that are not really admirable, or likable, but who deserve respect for their choices, their tenacity and strength nonetheless.Bezmozgis elegant writing mixed with the darkest humor and poetic prose are unparalleled at this timeThe best editorial review was from Publishers Weekly the book remains an assured, complex social novel whose rele [...]

NO SPOILERS How many people do you know are real heroes I bet not that many So why do I want a book to have at least one or two characters that I admire Well, the book gets kind of depressing otherwise Why bother reading, all I have to do is turn on the television or look out my window to see the ordinary In the beginning I was very much enjoying the humor, then I got tired of and annoyed at the characters I didn t learn really any history from this book either I did learn one thing, how life of [...]

David Bezmozgis latest novel The Free World is a finely crafted story about a Latvian family that is attempting to emigrate to a western country in 1978, but must first get accepted by a country while they wait in a kind of purgatory in Rome The family is made up of the patriarch and matriarch and their two sons and their families Both sons are married, but one has two children and the other is a newly wed On the surface it doesn t seems as though much happens in the novel, but there are two big [...]

Sometimes freedom is another word for nothing left to lose but often, it s the act of rediscovering what it means to truly be free The Krasnanskys a family of Latvian Jews have chosen to give up a complex and familiar past to strike out for an uncertain future and, like other Soviet immigrants, must spend months in Rome waiting to secure their visas At the book s opening, they are in limbo abandoned by their sponsor, waiting to break free from bureaucratic red tape so they can continue their jou [...]

The summary on the back cover led to me to suppose this was a lighter read than it was Intelligent and insightful, I found it quite a harrowing read, delving into the past lives of its characters, Soviet refugees looking to start a new life in the West As the story begins they have arrived in Rome, that city intended as a brief stopover as they make their way to America However events get in the way of their plans and they find themselves stuck in Italy for the foreseeable As they find homes and [...]

The price of freedom comes at a great cost, as illustrated in this wry and acerbic novel of three generations of Soviet Jews who languish in limbo at a pension in Rome in 1978 They have come to this veritable weigh station with all their belongings, dreams and desires, to emigrate to freedom and assimilate in a new land David Bezmozgis s debut novel reflects a rich repository of knowledge, as he is a Latvian Jew who emigrated to Canada in 1973 He understands the immigrant experience personally, [...]

Seven years ago, I bought a plane ticket to somewhere new, packed 20 kilos of clothes and a laptop, and left the country Just like that, I became an immigrant, met another one, and now our children are first generation Brits even though none of their multiple passports are British ones just yet What makes for a good story to tell your grandchildren was really just a mix of boredom with the motherland and ample opportunities for EU citizens to live, work and produce offspring wherever they like W [...]

The Free World is the destination for the Krasnansky family from Riga, U.S.S.R Not from Riga, Republic of Latvia as it is today, but from Riga 1978 Three generations of Russian Jews Father, Mother, two sons, two daughters in law and two grandsons have gotten sponsorship from cousin Shura in Chicago and are just about to arrive in Italy when the novel begins Once in Italy a serious hiccup in the endless paperwork and luggage juggling that the Krasnansky family has been enduring endangers the immi [...]

There are some really great moments in this book, some of them laugh out loud funny or incredibly quirky, and I really like that it doesn t simply anything, but it just didn t hold together as a cohesive text for me Part of my lack of enthusiasm for it might have been due to the fact that I had just read arguably Dickens and Hemingway s best books Having said that, I would read his next book to see where he goes from here as an artist Samuel s story was very engaging and the fact that he adhered [...]

This is an interesting novel of emigration, specifically Soviet Jews, who are allowed to exit Russia during a thaw The author writes well, especially when describing the world of immgrants in Italy He shows their confusions and adjustments through one multigerational family which lets the reader feel the experience deeply.I think what s most surprising is to move through the familiar setting of Rome from a different perspective The traffic, the markets, the monuments all feel different when a d [...]

I am really not sure how to rate this book I admit that I knew nothing about the Soviet Union allowing Jews to emigrate in the late 1970s The story is about the time an extended Jewish family spends in Italy until they are approved to emigrate to Canada The story is told from the viewpoints of three characters Samuel, the father Alec, the youngest son and Polina, Alec s wife The first half of the book is very slow But it was necessary to build up the stories of the three primary characters told [...]

Endearing at times because this is the same way all Russian immigrants came before the early 90s including my family It gets three stars for the little bit of nostalgic childhood memory that it brings back and because it s such an easy read As far as immigrant experience accounts go, this is one of the weaker ones and feels a little bit superficial It gives off the impression of being an unfinished work, like an outline to build on There were a lot of times when he would describe an experience, [...]

Takes me back to those school s advanced literature classes in my country, reading about the characters having every day conversation and topics from one apartment to another Most of the time I was reading someone else s letter and figuring out where they are going to end up in the foreign countries Unfortunately, I had skipped few pages to keep up with my mental mood Overall it is well written and easy read I picked up few Italian phrases, got to google something about KGB of the Soviet Union a [...]

I ended up really getting into this one I don t think it was the subject matter particularly as much as it was the humanness of the characters that Bezmosgis manages to capture and convey The prose is thick and full of digression, but it moves forward really well despite that It just is the sort of writing that feels really good to read and plugs you right into the fallible but human parts of the characters.

I so wanted to like this book, but I had to give up on it due to boredom I had the same problem with Bezmogis previous book, a series of linked stories There is a dryness to this author s writing that is astounding What could be fascinating than immigrant stories Instead Bezmogis presents a dry, sordid world of discomfort probably true as far as it goes but it doesn t go far enough At least in the part I read.

Absolutely one of the best books I ve read in a long time, with all the right ingredients a story about a time and a place and a people I knew nothing about Jewish Russian emigrants waiting in Rome in 1978 for a country to accept them a lack of romanticism or sentimentality and writing that never hit a wrong note Pepper that with a feckless hero and the author s wry sense of humor, and you ve got a great read.

I thought this book had great promise but was disappointed with the ending needed another two chapters Felt like a second book fell into the last chapterd it didn t fitor at least it wasn t a satisfactory conclusion

An intimate portrait of transition, of relationships breaking and strengthening, of family reaching to protect and love Bezmozgis is an extremely talented writer and this book was an absolute pleasure to read.

insalata russa con maionese impazzitaLa storia inizia idealmente a Riga, ma si dipana come un intreccio di culture non facile da comprendere, anche perch Bez non ci fa entrare pi di tanto nella testa dei personaggi, se non del vecchio Ismail e di suo figlio Alec, privilegiando una narrazione alla fin fine aneddotica Il nucleo famigliare viene fotografato nel 1979, nell arco temporale dei 7 mesi di transito a Roma, dalla loro uscita dall URSS fino all ingresso in Canada A Roma la condizione di at [...]

Bezmozgis, born in Riga, Latvia, in 1973, centers this darkly humorous novel on the close knit, irascible Krasnansky family as they emigrate from Soviet Latvia in 1978, joining the flood of Russian Jews seeking a better life elsewhere Their way station on this way to peace and plenty in Canada, America, Australia, Israel somewhere is Rome.There are six adult Krasnanskys and two children Battle scarred Samuil, revolutionary and staunch communist, is the literal founder of the Krasnansky dynasty, [...]

what life was like for Jews leaving Russia but not very welcome anywhere else.

The book tells the story of the Krasnansky family, Latvian Jews moored for five months in Rome in 1978 as they await visas to migrate to North America The main characters are Samuil, the family patriarch and autocratic doctrinaire Communist Karl, the eldest son and pragmatic capitalist in the making Alec, the second son and apolitical, carefree playboy and Polina, Alec s long suffering Gentile wife Differences in political and religious ideologies inevitably result in domestic tensions.The vario [...]

Many books have been written about the immigrant experience the need to leave a land, the difficulty of assimilating into a new culture and the challenge of preserving identity David Bezmogis, a New Yorker 20 Under 40, uses his new and first novel, The Free World, to tackle the story of the Soviet Jews The Soviet Jews that were released in the 1960s and 1970s could not travel directly to Israel or the US Often, they stopped over in Vienna or Rome en route to the free world The stop over could ta [...]

I thought this book was a particularly interesting take on the experience of Latvian and Russian Jews who survived WWII and their children who do not want to live in either the Soviet Union or in Israel The book spans quite a few decades and works on both remembrances of the grandfather and the experiences of his children.There is a great deal in this book about religion and the experience of trying to immigrate to the US, Australia, or Canada which the main characters are trying to do and the s [...]

While I found David Bezmozgis s debut novel,The Free World, to be a beautifully written, vivid, and interesting tale of the Soviet Jewish immigrant experience, I found this book challenging to get into Unable to pinpoint why that might be, I turned to the internet to see if perhaps someone else could articulate a good reason for this, given that the book isn t a particularly challenging read And, of course, the internet did not disappoint Bezmozgis s background as a short story writer is in evid [...]

I discovered this book via the Shadow Giller Prize jury Kevin from Canada, Kim from Reading Matters and Trevor from the Mookse and the Gripes, and I bought it because I m interested in all things Russian this year.The novel is only indirectly about Russia it s about the Krasnansky family emigrating from the Soviet Union, and their sojourn in Rome The story is set in the 1970s when, in the wake of the 1967 Six Day War, there was a sharp increase in Jewish emigration from the pro Arab Soviet Union [...]

The characters and situation of this novel were almost completely unfamiliar to me when I began reading it Bezmozgis follows a family of Jews emigrating from the Soviet Union in 1978 who end up stuck in a bureaucratic limbo in Italy for nearly six months Each of the family members has his or her own misgivings about leaving the USSR, which are finely detailed in the novel The main focus is on the family s patriarch, Samuil, who served in the Red Army his son, Alec, a philandering bully and Alec [...]

The book starts as the Krasnansky family leaves Vienna for Rome It is 1978 and they are among the Soviet Jews given permission to leave the Soviet Union Their journey started in Riga when Latvia was part of the Soviet Union They are being aided by a Jewish organization that is assisting the Jews allowed to leave with getting permission to resettle in such countries as Israel, Australia, Canada, and the United States The top news story concerns the Egyptian Israeli peace treaty The patriarch is S [...]

This is an important story, historically We in the west have our long term media fed views of Russians but no authentic commentary, really This book tells the story of Russian Jewish emigrants and their hardships I add a star for significance because it helped me read it I felt its importance and wanted .I remove two stars for a few things The story feels flimsy for a novel It reads like a long short story where the setup is already understood and we experience the poignant character and situati [...]