Empire Falls

21 hrs. 8 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Richard Russo

Narrator Sergey Kirsanov

Description

Richard Russo’s “Empire Falls” is a Pulitzer Prize winner, “the last great American novel of the 20th century.”

Miles Roby has been preparing burgers at the “Imperial Grill” for twenty years—this job cost him his higher education and a good portion of self-respect. Miles is a decent guy, but there’s one tragic flaw in his character: he can’t take decisive action. Ever since his youth, he’s been circling around his own life, unable to break out of his stuffy hometown. What keeps him here? Maybe Tick’s smart, thin-skinned daughter, who can’t survive in the local school without support from her father. Or Jeannine—Miles’s ex-wife, who is basically not far from becoming so, entangled in a romance with the owner of a fitness club who is hopelessly self-absorbed. Or maybe powerful Francesine Whiting—the owner of everything that exists in the city…

In this novel, Richard Russo immerses the reader in the world of small lives, where quirks, intrigues, passions, and funny and tragic events continuously bubble. “Empire Falls” is a humane novel full of humor, compassion, sadness, and joy. Richard Russo has almost never been translated into Russian, and that’s a big oversight—because Russo is not only a major writer adored by critics, decorated with awards, and loved by readers; his books should be especially close to the Russian reader.

For HBO, a TV series with the same name was made based on the novel, starring Ed Harris, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Newman, and others.