ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOVE ALL, I am profoundly grateful to the Ukrainian and ­Russian friends, colleagues, and acquaintances without whose hospitality, generosity, and kindness this book would never have existed.

I was lucky to benefit from the insight, close reading, dedication, and encouragement of my excellent editors, Tom Avery at Heinemann and Tom Mayer at Norton. I was also fortunate in my agent, Zoë Pagnamenta. Christopher Cumming, Jeremy Kessler, Orysia Kulick, and Julia Yatsenko provided helpful comments and invaluable moral support. Keith Gessen at n+1 solicited several articles on Ukraine that later grew into this book. At Columbia University, Boris Gasparov and Tatiana Smoliarova introduced me to many of the literary themes and figures discussed here.

I owe a special debt to my wonderful parents, who instilled in me a lifelong love of literature and supported my sometimes mystifying journeys to foreign lands.

The Institute for International Education provided the grant that allowed me to live in Ukraine for an extended period, and the International Research and Exchanges Board supported my time in Irkutsk.

Short portions of this book stem from articles written for Foreign Affairs, n+1, The Nation, and The New Yorker. I am grateful to the editors and other staff who worked with me at those publications.