Brisbane

"Brisbane" is one of Eugene Vodolazkin’s most personal novels.

Synopsis
Eugene Vodolazkin is a winner of the Big Book and Yasnaya Polyana literary awards. In his novel "Brisbane," he continues the stories of characters (from "Laurus" and "Aviator") whose fates, much like in an ancient tragedy, change suddenly and irrevocably. Gleb Yanovsky, a virtuoso musician, loses his ability to perform at the peak of his success due to an illness and attempts to find a different meaning in life—a new point of stability. The past helps him in this effort: he tries to piece together memories of his childhood in Kyiv in the seventies, his youth in Leningrad, and his present in Germany and then back in Kyiv in the two-thousands. Yet Brisbane is missing from these life journeys. And does such a city even exist? Or is it merely a mirage, a dream, a utopian ideal, the music of the spheres?
— The city of Brisbane, and Australia in general, is often mentioned in your interviews. Why?
— Because when it’s winter here, it’s summer there.
— And when it’s summer here?
— Then it’s summer there, too. By our standards, summer. In our family, that place was considered paradise.
— For a paradise, the population is a bit too specific. Descendants of convicts.
— So what?
— Paradise requires a good biography.
— Have you been there?
— Where, to Australia?
— No, to paradise. How do you know what kind of biography is required there?

A novel with a distinctive tone, in which an observant reader will find many parallels between the fates of the protagonist and the author.
A poignant text about music and the search for meaning when everything you lived for is suddenly taken away. The plot centers on a world-class virtuoso guitarist who is stripped of his ability to perform by illness at the height of his career. How do you go on living if music was everything?
A polyphonic chronicle of modernity. Two temporal layers—the protagonist's past and present—unfold against the backdrop of iconic historical events: the Stagnation, Perestroika, the coup, and the Maidan.
Brisbane is a symbol of an unattainable dream and the eternal human yearning for what lies on the other side of the globe.
Eugene Vodolazkin is a writer and literary scholar, author of the novels "Laurus" and "Aviator," winner of the Big Book award, and one of the most prominent figures in contemporary Russian literature.

The novel "Brisbane" is a choice for connoisseurs of deep, intellectual prose. If you appreciate themes of lost meaning and the reassessment of fate, as seen in the novels of Anna Matveeva ("Every Hundred Years"), or if you value disarming honesty and masterful work with time, as in the works of Alexey Ivanov and Guzel Yakhina, this story is for you. The book makes a great gift for men and women, partners, moms and dads, grandparents, friends, loved ones, and colleagues for New Year’s, birthdays, February 23rd, March 8th, or Valentine’s Day. The novel is also suited for those who seek not only an engaging plot in literature, but also a point of stability in a changing world.