Good Citizens Need Not Fear

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF ENDLING '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. Inspired by her own family's history, Reva's 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. 'A comic triumph' GLOBE AND MAIL 'Bang-on brilliant' MIRIAM TOEWS 'Luminous' YANN MARTEL 'Outstanding' ANTHONY DOERR 'Maria Reva's enthralling debut of interlinked short stories achieves the double effect of timelessness and timeliness' KAPKA KASSABOVA, GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE DAY

Maria Reva was born in Ukraine and grew up in Canada. Her debut story collection, Good Citizens Need Not Fear, won the Kobzar Book Award and was a finalist for the Writers' Trust of Canada's Fiction Prize. Endling, her debut novel, won the Gordon Burns Prize, the Aspen Words Literary Prize and the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize; was longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Climate Fiction Prize and was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction. Her writing has been featured in the Atlantic, Granta, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. She also works as an opera librettist.