Synopses & Reviews
One Sunday morning, Nick Blud, a successful Boston physician, is home in bed when he receives a phone call from Ada Kruk, the mother of a boyhood friend. Ada summons Nick back to his old Ukranian-American New Jersey neighborhood, where something unspeakable has just happened-exactly what, no one is willing to say. To find out, Nick sets off on a journey through the past, his own as well as that of Ada's son, Alex, who long has struggled to escape his family's legacy of violence.
A harrowing tale about friendship and love, America and the immigrant's dream, Ambassador of the Dead introduces Ada Kruk, a mother like no other, at once Mary and Medea, Sarah and Medusa. A study of ambitions gone awry and appetites too easily gratified, this novel is also an unflinching meditation on exile and assimilation and the price of love.
Review
Ambassador of the Dead is an extraordinary novel, passionately and intelligently written...Askold Melnyczuk has brought to light the flip side of the American dream shaded by the dark loneliness of the human heart." Ha Jin, author of Waiting
Review
"... the most haunting, vividly drawn characters of any recent fiction, a major novel that crosses boundaries ... " James Carroll
Synopsis
Nick Blud, a Boston physician receives a phone call from Ada Kruk, the mother of a boyhood friend. Ada summons Nick back to his old Ukranian-American New Jersey neighborhood, where something unspeakable has just happened--exactly what, no one is willing to say. A harrowing tale about friendship and love, America and the immigrant's dream, "Ambassador of the Dead" is an unflinching meditation on exile, assimilation and the price of love.
About the Author
Askold Melnyczuk's widely praised first novel, What Is Told, was a New York Times Notable Book. He teaches in the Bennington Graduate Writing Seminars and at Boston University, where he also edits the literary journal AGNI. He lives in Medford, Massachusetts.