Good Citizens Need Not Fear

Book excerpt: FINALIST FOR THE WRITERS' TRUST FICTION PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE RAKUTEN KOBO EMERGING WRITER PRIZE A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR "Bang-on brilliant." --Miriam Toews "Luminous" --Yann Martel "Outstanding." --Anthony Doerr "Bright, funny, satirical and relevant. . . . A new talent to watch!" --Margaret Atwood (via Twitter) This brilliant and bitingly funny novel-in-stories, set in and around a single crumbling apartment building in Soviet-era Ukraine, heralds the arrival of a major new talent. A cast of unforgettable characters--citizens of the small industrial town of Kirovka--populate Maria Reva's ingeniously entwined tales that span the chaotic years leading up to and immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. Weaving the strands of the narrative together is an unforgettable, chameleon-like young woman named Zaya: an orphan turned beauty-pageant crasher who survives the extraordinary circumstances of her childhood through a compelling combination of ferocity, intelligence, stubbornness and wit. Good Citizens Need Not Fear takes us from paranoia to tenderness and back again, exploring what it is to be an individual amid the roiling forces of history. Inspired by her family's own experiences in Ukraine, Reva brings the dark absurdity of early Gary Shteyngart, the empathy of Miriam Toews, and the sly interconnectedness of Anthony Marra's The Tsar of Love and Techno to a sparkling work of fiction that is as clever as it is heartfelt.