Overview

Everything is Normal offers a lighthearted worm's-eye-view of the USSR through the middle-class Soviet childhood of a nerdy boy in the 1970s and '80s. A relatable journey into the world of the late-days Soviet Union, Everything is Normal is both a memoir and a social history--a reflection on the mundane deprivations and existential terrors of day-to-day life in Leningrad in the decades preceding the collapse of the USSR. Sergey Grechishkin's world is strikingly different, largely unknown, and fascinatingly unusual, and yet a world that readers who grew up in the United States or Europe during the same period will partly recognize. This is a tale of friendship, school, and growing up--to read Everything is Normal is to discover the very foreign way of life behind the Iron Curtain, but also to journey back into a shared past.

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9781942645900

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Reviews

Like walking through the looking-glass into 1970s-80s Leningrad... funny, shocking and occasionally even tender... prepare to be transported back to the CCCP. --Lisa Dickey, author of Bears in the Streets A rare glimpse of life in Soviet Russia before and during perestroika. Everything is Normal is the tender and often funny story of a personal journey paralleled by seismic changes in the country itself. A captivating read. --Elena Gorokhova, author of Russian Tattoo

"""A wonderful, funny, and evocative account of growing up in the Soviet Union... Grechishkin is a major new talent and a writer of humor and verve."" --Luke Harding, author of #1 New York Times best-seller Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win ""Like walking through the looking-glass into 1970s-80s Leningrad... funny, shocking and occasionally even tender... prepare to be transported back to the CCCP."" --Lisa Dickey, author of Bears in the Streets ""A rare glimpse of life in Soviet Russia before and during perestroika. Everything is Normal is the tender and often funny story of a personal journey paralleled by seismic changes in the country itself. A captivating read."" --Elena Gorokhova, author of Russian Tattoo"

Author Information

Life's journey took Sergey Grechishkin from a communal flat in Leningrad, through studies in China and France, and on to top banking jobs in London. Today he splits his time between London and Singapore and juggles his work and three children with teaching, investing into early-stage businesses, and writing. Everything is Normal is his first book.

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