Keith Gessen Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Keith Gessen is an accomplished published author. He was born in Moscow in 1975, moving with his family to the United States when he was six years of age.

He is known for being the co-founder of the literary magazine n + 1. He is also known for writing the novels All The Sad Young Literary Men, his debut, and his second novel A Terrible Country.

Keith has written about Russia for a variety of places. These include the New Yorker, the Nation, n + 1, the London Review of Books, and the New York Times Magazine. He has also translated or co-translated different books from Russian, such as Voices from Chernobyl, There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby, and It’s No Good.

Keith has also served as the editor for the n+1 books such as What We Should Have Known, Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager, and City by City.

Keith is married to Emily Gould, who is also an author and a publisher. He resides in New York with his wife and their son Raphy, who has a fondness for squishy candy.

All the Sad Young Literary Men is the debut novel by Keith Gessen. This is a novel that Vogue called ‘wincingly funny’ and is about wasted youth, sadness, love, and literary as well as intellectual ambition.

This book is a portrait of young adulthood as it stands at the beginning of the 21st century. This story follows along with the lives of the men Keith, Mark and Sam as they go through their college years overthinking, go through their love lives underthinking, and do their best to try and find some maturity and responsibility in addition to literary fame. Read this book to follow along with everything that happens!

A Terrible Country is the second novel from author Keith Gessen. This is a literary tale that is about Russia as well as love, family, and loyalty.

Andrei Kaplan’s older brother Dima is strongly insisting that Andrei come back to Moscow for the purposes of caring for their grandmother, who is under the weather. The request makes Andrei take new stock of his life living in New York, and it’s not looking great.

He has a girlfriend, but she’s stopped returning his texts. He has a dissertation adviser, but he’s lukewarm about his job prospects. In the summer of 2008, Andrei is also finding that his bank account is really running low. It might just be that a few months back in Moscow are the thing that he needs.

Andrei decides that it’s a good idea to go back to Russia for some time. What could go wrong? He sublets his Brooklyn room, packs up all of his hockey stuff, and then moves into an apartment that his grandmother was given by Stalin.

She’s a woman who managed to outlive her husband as well as the majority of her friends. She also made it through the tough times of communism and saw firsthand the violent capitalist transformation of Russia when she lost her dacha. Andrei is welcomed into her home by her, even if she is not always able to recall who he is.

Andrei does his best to adapt there and soon is navigating Putin’s Moscow. It’s still the place that he was born, but the coffee prices have gone up. Andrei also looks after his grandmother, who is still sharp, finds a new place where he can play hockey, tracks down a cafe where he can send emails, and even finds some friends, such as a beautiful activist named Yulia.

Throughout the course of this year, his grandmother is doing worse for health. Meanwhile, his own feelings of being dislocated from Russia and America get even deeper. Andrei understands that he has to reckon with his future, and that the choices that he makes now will ultimately determine his life and his fate.

When he becomes all mixed up with a group of leftists, not only his politics will be tested but his allegiances as well. He has to come to terms not only with the society that he was born into but the American one that he has known ever since he was young.

A smart and sensitive story about Russia that takes into account love, family, exile, history and fate, this novel asks what any of us owe to the place that we were born, and what it owes us in return. Writing with a sense of grace that is indelibly infused with humor, Keith is able to deliver an incredible and brilliant novel that may end up solidifying him as one of the greatest novelists of his generation. Read this book to follow along with every word yourself!