In her stunning debut novel, Anya Ulinich delivers a funny and unforgettable story of a Russian mail-order bride trying to find her place in America. After losing her father, her boyfriend, and her baby, Sasha Goldberg decides that getting herself to the United States is the surest path to deliverance. But she finds that life in Phoenix with her Red Lobster &loving fiancisn't much better than life in Siberia, and so she treks across America on a misadventure-filled search for her long- lost father. Petropolis is a deeply moving story about the unexpected connections that create a family and the faraway places that we end up calling home.

"Audacious, clever, and lively . . . a nervy social satire in the spirit of Tom Wolfe, Aleksandar Hemon, Gish Jen, Gary Shteyngart, and Lara Vapnyar."

Chicago Tribune

"Ulinich has a knack for the tragicomic. . . . Petropolis is engaging, funny, and genuinely moving in all the right places."

Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A moving account of a perpetual outsider's desire to belong, both to her family and to the wide, weird world she encounters with a sometimes weary heart and plenty of chutzpah."

USA Today

"A beautiful far-ranging voice equally at home on both sides of the Atlantic . . . Anya Ulinich's satiric romp gives new meaning to the word [bittersweet.'"

Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante's Handbook

Sasha Goldberg is the ultimate outsider: she's a chubby, biracial Jewish girl from the Siberian town of Asbestos 2. Her father takes off for the United States, and leaves Sasha to navigate adolescence in a bleak apartment bloc with her overbearing mother. Sasha falls in love with an art school drop-out who lives inside a concrete pipe in the town dump. Following her heart gets her into trouble at home, so she flees Russia as a mail-order bride and lands in suburban Arizona. Sasha manages to escape her Red Lobster-loving fianc? and embarks on a misadventure-filled journey across America in search of her father.

Anya Ulinich has crafted an unforgettable story of familial fault lines, cross-cultural confusion, and the beguiling allure of new beginnings. "Petropolis" is a funny and poignant debut marking the arrival of a major new voice in fiction.

In her stunning debut novel, Ulinich delivers a funny and unforgettable story of a Russian mail-order bride trying to find her place in America. "Petropolis" is a deeply moving story about the unexpected connections that create a family and the faraway places that people end up calling home.

Anya Ulinich was seventeen when her family left Moscow and immigrated to the United States. She attended the Art Institute of Chicago and received an MFA in painting from the University of California, Davis.