The Free World

The New Yorker ‘20 Under 40’ writer’s rapturously reviewed comic-tragic novel about a family’s search for a home

‘Terrific … Combines comic brilliance with a poignant portrait of a family trapped between two worlds’ Sunday Times

In the summer of 1978 the Krasnansky family - bickering, tired and confused - arrive in Rome. Alongside thousands of other Soviet Jewish refugees they await passage to a new home in the West. But escaping Communism is not so easy, especially when some of the Krasnanskys insist on bringing it with them. It is harder still when their American sponsor lets them down and they find they’re stuck. What follows is a tragic yet comic tale of reckless brothers and long-suffering sisters, ailing parents and innocent children, of love affairs and criminal liaisons, of a wonderfully troubled family and a perpetually wandering people, and their epic search for a home…