Empire Falls

25 hrs. 14 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Richard Russo

Narrator Vladimir Levasheov

Description

Miles Roby has spent twenty years cooking burgers at the “Imperial Grill.” This job cost him his higher education and quite a bit of self-respect. Miles is a good guy, but in his character there’s one tragic flaw: he can’t take decisive action. Ever since youth, trying to escape the suffocating hometown he circles his own life instead of leaving it. What keeps him here? Maybe Tik—the smart, thin-skinned daughter whom he has to support, because without her father she won’t survive at the local school; or Jeanine, ex-wife by almost five minutes of Miles, who has started a romance with the hopelessly self-involved owner of a fitness club; or maybe the domineering Francine Whyting, the owner of everything the town has to offer?

In this novel, Richard Russo immerses the reader in the world of small lives, where oddities, intrigue, passions, and funny and tragic events bubble along. “Empire Falls” is a humane novel, full of humor, compassion, sadness, and joy. Richard Russo is hardly ever translated into Russian, and that’s a big mistake, because Russo isn’t only a major writer praised by critics, crowned with awards, and loved by readers—his books should be especially close to Russian readers.