Father Looks West

“Father Looks to the West” is Catherine Manoylo’s debut novel. Long before the book was released, it drew close attention from literary critics and reviewers, and it also received the “Lyceum” prize named after Alexander Pushkin. The heroine of the novel, Katya, is the daughter of a Russian and a Kazakh; she lives in a small border town, and these two cultures have equally shaped her personality—contradictory, complex, vivid. She leaves for Moscow due to a deep personal tragedy, but escaping her native places forever is impossible: they pull her in, force her to return at least for a while, and try to break her. This is a novel about violence and freedom, happiness and dependence, death and life triumphant over it. This audiobook is about children’s rebellion against fathers, and in most cases, that’s where the real love is hidden. The book is read by the author.