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An engrossing read, Brisbane is lightly melancholic, a pale late afternoon of a story. Vodolazkin’s strength as a writer is his lightness, humour and wryness.
The Catholic Weekly, Australia
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Vodolazkin, a Kyiv-born Russian who attended Ukrainian-language school before moving to St Petersburg as an adult, is steeped in ethnic and linguistic dualism. … Of Vodolazkin’s four novels, this is his most contemporary – and autobiographical. … Brisbane is a richly polyphonic novel.
TLS (Times Literary Supplements), UK
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Compelling reading: brilliantly vivid and inventive, it combines magical-realist mischief with a compassionate, radically Christian perspective on the self-destroying idiocies of human history and political posturing. A masterpiece by one of Europe’s finest contemporary novelists.
Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury
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Brisbane explores what it means to be human, and to be Christian, especially in the face of death. It’s about the universal experience of learning how to live.
Sarah Clark, Fare Foreward
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Russia and Ukraine fight over territory and national identity, but Vodolazkin’s novel does not pick a side. Instead, he troubles our idea of the separation and difference that make a “side” or a border. As countries and bodies are torn apart by nationalisms and sectarianisms of every sort, Vodolazkin raises the question of survival itself – will there be a future?
First Things
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Brisbane is deep, ambitious. With its constant questions about whether one can be simultaneously Russian and Ukrainian, it is a timely novel. At the same time, it is also an investment – of time, of emotional stamina, of a willingness to look beyond one’s own understanding of humanity, the arts, and language. … Brisbane gives one message to readers seeking for a more meaningful reading and existence: live every moment – to the fullest.
Southern Review of Books
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With Brisbane, Eugene Vodolazkin, the artistic grandson of Dostoevsky, continues to develop his novelistic philosophy exploring how death contributes to life’s baffling meaningfulness.
Englewood Review of Books, feature review
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Brisbane is, in a few words, a damn good novel. Beautifully translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz, I enjoyed it immensely, and will probably seek out more books by Vodolazkin. My very highest recommendation.
Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, Booklover
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Brisbane is an ambitious novel: a meditation on the nature and staying power of music (and art in general), a love letter to the written word, and a nascent inquiry into whether one can be simultaneously Russian and Ukrainian. … Vodolazkin’s pleasure in skewering convention and received wisdom is evident throughout his novels.
Katherine Young, On the Seawall
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Great prose recommends itself, and Vodolazkin’s needs none of my poor lauds. [His] novels do for time what Wendell Berry does for space: we can’t just live where we are, we have to live when we are, too.
Aaron Weinacht, Front Porch Republic
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As the [war] has unfolded, Vodolazkin’s depiction of these two languages as part of one and the same person, as brothers and foes simultaneously, while not completely new for me, has introduced more nuance into my thinking. For an English reader less familiar with the relationship between Russia and Ukraine, the novel may well be a revelation.
Marian Schwartz, LiteraryHub
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Each [of Vodolazkin’s novels] is its own song, and these songs heard together become greater than the sum of their parts … The worlds of Laurus and Brisbane do not harmonize; instead, they sing to each other. Sometimes they shout at each other. But through it all Vodolazkin probes his central theme: the mysterious relationship of time and salvation, the bleeding back and forth of joy and grief across life and history, the never-ending exchange between our end and our beginning.
Jane C. Scharl, The European Conservative
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Intensely lyrical and tender, while punctuated by moments of transfixing beauty, violence, ecstasy, and pain, Vodolazkin’s masterpiece is at once relatable and transcendent, straightforward and multilayered, rational and mystical. But what makes it especially relevant and poignant today, is its examination of the intertwined fates of two nations, Russia and Ukraine, through the lens of changing political regimes and complicated family relations.
Dr. Marina Alexandrova, Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies, University of Texas at Austin
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Using two narrative voices – Kyiv-born guitarist Gleb Yanovsky’s and his alcohol-sodden biographer Nestor’s – this novel counterposes past and present, self and other. It can be defined as an exercise in Dostoyevskian polyphony, and certainly few contemporary writers are as steeped in the Russian greats as Vodolazkin. But it’s also 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
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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
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Vodolazkin’s writing is symphonic in its abundance of descriptive detail.
Michael Kurek
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Vodolazkin can be very funny in the mordant Russian way. His depictions of Soviet-era academia are wry. . . . Although funny in places, the overarching mood of Brisbane is one of nostalgia, the emotion that pines for what is lost. Vodolazkin creates an atmosphere of suspicion that one is missing the most important moments, seeing the most important truths only in passing glances.
R. R. Reno, First Things
