The Germans

Aleksandr Terekhоv is the author of novels “Memoirs of Emergency Service,” “Rat Catcher,” “Babaev,” and the controversial bestseller “Stone Bridge” (Big Book Award, shortlist of the Russian Booker), translated into English and Italian.

If the protagonist of “The Stone Bridge” is immersed in the recent—Stalin-era—past and is bewitched by the secrets of the “red aristocracy,” then the main character of the new novel “The Germans” tells the story of what is happening in our days.

Eberhard, head of the press center in one of the city prefectures, is a smart and ironic skeptic who has fully absorbed the rules of the bureaucratic elite. As a junior officer of the all-powerful System, he understands what it means to live “according to common understandings.” But the stance of a conformist turns into an unexpected collapse of his career.

His personal life is also not simple: everything is subordinated to a struggle for his daughter from his first marriage.

A sharp satire of customs is pushed to the limit; the “family theme” is expressed with astonishing and disarming frankness…