Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"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 The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan
Review
"How did she do it? Anya Ulinich has written and in a second language, no less a smashing debut, at once a deeply moving coming-of-age odyssey and a globe-spanning satire of societies gone desperately and hilariously awry. I loved Petropolis for its bone-dry humor, eye-popping authenticity, and vividly realized characters. Most of all, I loved Sasha Goldberg. Through its darkest and most comic moments, this book made me very, very happy." Katherine Shonk, author of The Red Passport
Review
"For a girl from a bleak Siberian town, Ulinich's protagonist Sasha Goldberg has a surprisingly big heart and a hysterical view of life in America. Petropolis is a compassionate and unusual novel about motherhood, immigration, and religious fanaticism." Laura Dave, author of London Is The Best City In America
Review
"Ulinich is unflinchingly funny, sensitive, and a superb new talent." Akhil Sharma, author of An Obedient Father)
Review
"Petropolis is a real feast of sharp wit, quirky characters and amazing situations." Lara Vapnyar, author of Memoirs of a Muse and There Are Jews in My House
Review
"A dark irresistible comedy with an authentic Russian voice." Martin Cruz Smith, author of Gorky Park and Stalin's Ghost
Review
"Ulinich has written fresh and nervy social satire in the spirit, if not quite with the power, of Tom Wolfe, Aleksandar Hemon, Gish Jen, Gary Shteyngart and Lara Vapnyar." Chicago Tribune
Review
"Petropolis is engaging, funny and genuinely moving in all the right places. It is a sparkling debut, a unique comic novel." Los Angeles Times
Review
"Ulinich has a keen literary sensibility that brings forth the pathos of her heroine's quest without indulging in bathos." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"Ulinich's first novel...tackles many difficult issues: motherhood, an immigrant's desperate attempts to escape her family and her country, both racial and national identity, and the lengths to which people will go to get by in this world." Library Journal
Review
"[T]he final chapters are filled with some nicely detailed observations about her two homelands and alienation in general." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
Abandoned by her father and struggling through adolescence under the shadow of her overbearing mother, Jewish-Siberian teen Sasha has a baby with a nihilistic homeless alcoholic and becomes a mail-order bride as part of her quest to find her father in America. A first novel.
Synopsis
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 fiancé isn'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.
About the Author
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. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.