Jacob's Ladder

From a Man Booker International Prize nominee, “a century of tangled Russian family history in [a] lucid saga . . .a challenging yet rewarding epic.” ―Publishers Weekly

“Ulitskaya continues the tradition of prerevolutionary Russian literature and demonstrates why she’s one of the most popular novelists in today’s Russia.” –The New York Times.

Jumping between the diaries and letters of Jacob Ossetsky in Kiev in the early 1900s and the experiences of his granddaughter Nora in the theatrical world of Moscow in the 1970s and beyond, Jacob’s Ladder guides the reader through some of the most turbulent times in the history of Russia and Ukraine, and draws suggestive parallels between historical events of the early twentieth century and those of more recent memory.

Spanning the seeming promise of the prerevolutionary years, to the dark Stalinist era, to the corruption and confusion of the present day, Jacob’s Ladder is a pageant of romance, betrayal, and memory. With a scale worthy of Tolstoy, it asks how much control any of us have over our lives—and how much is in fact determined by history, by chance, or indeed by the genes passed down by the generations that have preceded us into the world.

“An expansive novel about the complications of human lives and repeating generational patterns, set against a backdrop that skips across a century of tumultuous Russian and Soviet history.” ―Booklist

“A sweeping, ambitious story reminiscent at times of Pasternak in its grasp of both history and tragedy.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review