{"title":"Maria Kuznetsova","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"oksana-behave-book-maria-kuznetsova-9780525511892","title":"Oksana, Behave!","description":"\u003cb\u003e\"[The] Ukrainian American heroine of this sweet-bitter debut is a wisecracking fatalist who can be counted on to say the inappropriate thing, a tendency that becomes more pronounced as doomed crushes and family crises pile up on the road to adulthood\u003ci\u003e.\u003c\/i\u003e\"--\u003ci\u003eO: The Oprah Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e When Oksana and her family move from the Ukraine to Florida to begin a new American life, her physicist father delivers pizza at night to make ends meet, her cranky mother sits at home all day worrying, and her flamboyant grandmother relishes the attention she gets from men. All Oksana wants is to be as far away from her family as possible, to have friends, and to be normal--and though she constantly tries to do the right thing, she keeps getting in trouble.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e As she grows up, she continues to misbehave, from somewhat accidentally maiming the school-bus bully, to stealing the much-coveted key to New York City's Gramercy Park, to falling in love with a married man. After her grandmother moves back to Ukraine, Oksana longs for the motherland that looms large in her imagination but is a country she never really knew.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e When she visits her grandmother in Yalta and learns about her romantic past, Oksana comes to a new understanding of how to live without causing harm to the people she loves. But will Oksana ever quite learn to behave?\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eOksana, Behave!\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Tragicomic and bittersweet . . . an immigrant's coming-of-age tale done with brio.\"\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"What luck for readers that Oksana can't behave! Little devil, infinite imbecile, poor futureless child--all the names her displaced, loving family give to her as she crashes and burns and wanders the wilderness of her inheritance, fit perfectly. As outrageous as she is, as funny and as awful as she can be, though, in Oksana, Maria Kuznetsova has also created a character of great passion and depth--of tragedy, even, too--the very sort that populate the stories of Chekhov and Tolstoy, the poems of Anna Akhmatova, and all the other Russian writers Oksana looks to for comfort and company and some sort of bearing in this absurd world. This novel is a stark, hilarious delight.\"\u003cb\u003e--Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize\u003c\/b\u003e-\u003cb\u003ewinning author of \u003ci\u003eTinkers\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49614574911761,"sku":"GOR012782843","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50293685879057,"sku":"CIN052551189XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51415940595985,"sku":"CIN052551189XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53262133035281,"sku":"NIN9780525511892","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/052551189X.jpg?v=1751293061"},{"product_id":"something-unbelievable-book-maria-kuznetsova-9780525511908","title":"Something Unbelievable","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn overwhelmed new mom \u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003ediscovers unexpected parallels between life in twenty-first-century America\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e and her grandmother's account of their family's escape from the Nazis in this sharp, heartfelt novel.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eA fresh perspective--one that's both haunting and hilarious--on dual-timeline war stories, a feat that only a writer of Kuznetsova's caliber could pull off.--Fiona Davis, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Lions of Fifth Avenue\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eLarissa is a stubborn, brutally honest woman in her eighties, tired of her home in Kiev, Ukraine--tired of everything really, except for her beloved granddaughter, Natasha. Natasha is tired as well, but that's because she just had a baby, and she's struggling to balance her roles as a new mother, a wife, a struggling actress, and a host to her husband's slacker best friend, Stas, who has been staying with them in their cramped one-bedroom apartment in upper Manhattan. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e When Natasha asks Larissa to tell the story of her family's Soviet wartime escape from the Nazis in Kiev, she reluctantly agrees. Maybe Natasha is just looking for distraction from her own life, but Larissa is desperate to make her happy, even though telling the story makes her heart ache. Larissa recounts the nearly three-year period when she fled with her self-absorbed sister, parents, and grandmother to a factory town in the Ural Mountains where they faced starvation, a cholera outbreak, a tragic suicide, and where she was torn in her affections for two brothers from a wealthy family. But neither Larissa nor Natasha can anticipate how loudly these lessons of the past will echo in their present moments. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eSomething Unbelievable \u003c\/i\u003eexplores with piercing wit and tender feeling just how much our circumstances shape our lives and what we pass on to the younger generations, willingly or not.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50353884692753,"sku":"CIN0525511903G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50353887707409,"sku":"CIN0525511903VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52398381859089,"sku":"GOR014517639","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0525511903.jpg?v=1750846999"},{"product_id":"oksana-behave-book-maria-kuznetsova-9780525511878","title":"Oksana, Behave!","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn irresistible (Anthony Marra) debut about a Russian American girl's bumpy path to adulthood\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe voice is so, so sharp and so funny that I am just like tickled--tickled --to be reading it.--Emma Straub, \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e When Oksana's family begins their new American life in Florida after emigrating from Ukraine, her physicist father delivers pizza at night to make ends meet, her depressed mother sits home all day worrying, and her flamboyant grandmother relishes the attention she gets when she walks Oksana to school, not realizing that the street they're walking down is known as Prostitute Street. Oksana just wants to have friends and lead a normal life--and though she constantly tries to do the right thing, she keeps getting herself in trouble. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e As she grows up, she continues to misbehave, from somewhat accidentally maiming the school bus bully, to stealing the much-coveted (and expensive-to-replace) key to New York City's Gramercy Park, to falling in love with a married man. As her grandmother moves back to Ukraine, her father gets a job at Goldman Sachs, and her mother knits endless scarves, Oksana longs for a Russia that looms large in her imagination but is a country she never really knew. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e When she visits her grandmother in Yalta and learns about Baba's wartime past and her lost loves, Oksana begins to see just how much alike they are, and comes to a new understanding of how to embrace life and love without causing harm to the people dearest to her. But will Oksana ever quite learn to behave? \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eOksana, Behave \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTragicomic and bittersweet . . . an immigrant's coming-of-age tale done with brio.\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhat luck for readers that Oksana can't behave  Little devil, infinite imbecile, poor futureless child--all the names her displaced, loving family give to her as she crashes and burns and wanders the wilderness of her inheritance, fit perfectly. 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This novel is a stark, hilarious delight.\u003cb\u003e--Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize\u003c\/b\u003e-\u003cb\u003ewinning author of \u003ci\u003eTinkers\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50355021447441,"sku":"CIN0525511873A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50355028230417,"sku":"CIN0525511873G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0525511873.jpg?v=1751166657"},{"product_id":"russia-reimagined-book-maria-kuznetsova-9781787953406","title":"Russia Reimagined","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53187450503441,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53187450994961,"sku":"NIN9781787953406","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781787953406.jpg?v=1772391926"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/de-de\/collections\/autor-buecher-von-maria-kuznetsova.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}