Gold Medal, 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) for Literary Fiction
Longlisted for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award
Winner of the Ivo Andrić Grand Prize for best novel of 2022
From the INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR Eugene Vodolazkin – winner of the BIG BOOK AWARD, the LEO TOLSTOY YASNAYA POLYANA AWARD, and the READ RUSSIA AWARD
For fans of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Umberto Eco
Vodolazkin’s new novel Brisbane is “a sophisticated and frequently moving study in dissonance, dedicated to pointing out contrasts between art and life, beauty and decay, intention and outcome. And, yes, between Ukraine and Russia” (Booklist).
Brisbane is a richly layered, universal coming-of-age story of a musical prodigy robbed of his talent by an incurable disease who attempts to overcome his mortality. After Gleb Yanovsky, a celebrated guitarist, is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at age fifty, he permits a writer, Sergei Nesterov, to pen his biography. For years, they meet regularly as Gleb recounts the life he’s lived thus far: a difficult childhood in Kyiv, his formative musical studies in St. Petersburg, and his later years in Munich, where he lives with his wife and meets a thirteen-year-old virtuoso whom he embraces as his own daughter. In a mischievous and tender account, Gleb recalls a personal story of a lifetime quest for meaning, and how the burden of success changes with age.
Expanding the literary universe spun in his earlier novels, Vodolazkin explores music and fame, heritage and belonging, time and memory in this beautifully-wrought and relevant tale that carefully unravel into a puzzle: Whose story is it – the subject's or the writer's? Are art and love really no match for death? Is memory a reliable narrator? In Brisbane, the city of our dreams, as in music, Gleb hopes he’s found a path to eternity – and a way to stop the clock.
"In this complex novel from the winner of two of Russia's biggest literary prizes, a celebrated guitarist robbed of his talent by Parkinson's disease seeks other paths to immortality: by authorizing a biographer and adopting an exceptionally gifted thirteen-year-old musician"--
The magic of Vodolazkin’s talent takes place in the level of ideas and plot… and in the level of words and sounds. Vodolazkin plays with both Russian and Ukrainian languages that were not lost in translation. —Alexandra Guzeva, Russia Beyond
