112th: Paul Goldberg on The Dissident

Event date: 
06/15/2023 - 7:00pm

Join us Thursday, June 15th at 7pm for a reading and discussion with Paul Goldberg to celebrate the release of his newest book, The DissidentJulia Meitov Hersey will join in conversation. 

In order to facilitate this in-person author event, we will be partially closing the second floor starting at 6:45pm. Please review our COVID-19 Safety guidelines and register for the event using the link below. 

   

or register using the following link: https://forms.gle/rk4gy1zpfKThJKTFA


About The Dissident:

A thrilling, witty, and slyly original Cold War mystery about a ragtag group of Jewish refuseniks in Moscow.

On his wedding day in 1976, Viktor Moroz stumbles upon a murder scene: two gay men, one of them a U.S. official, have been axed to death in Moscow. Viktor, a Jewish refusenik, is stuck in the Soviet Union because the government has denied his application to leave for Israel; he sits “in refusal” alongside his wife and their group of intellectuals, Jewish and not. But the KGB spots Viktor leaving the murder scene. Plucked off the street, he’s given a choice: find the murderer or become the suspect of convenience. His deadline is nine days later, when Henry Kissinger will be arriving in Moscow. Unsolved ax murders, it seems, aren’t good for politics.

A whip-smart, often hilarious Cold War thriller, Paul Goldberg’s The Dissident explores what it means to survive in the face of impossible choices and monumental consequences. To help solve the case, Viktor ropes in his community, which includes his banned-text-distributing wife, a hard-drinking sculptor, a Russian priest of Jewish heritage, and a visiting American intent on reliving World War II heroics. As Viktor struggles to determine whom to trust, he’s forced to question not only the KGB’s murky motives but also those of his fellow refuseniks—and the man he admires above all: Kissinger himself.

Immersive, unpredictable, and always ax-sharp, The Dissident is Cold War intrigue at its most inventive. It is an uncompromising look at sacrifice, community, and the scars of history and identity, from an expert storyteller.


Paul Goldberg is the author of the novels The Yid, which was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the National Jewish Book Award's Goldberg Prize for Debut Fiction, and The Château. As a reporter, Goldberg has written two books about the Soviet human rights movement, and co-authored (with Otis Brawley) the book How We Do Harm, an expose of the U.S. healthcare system. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Slate, The New York Times, and elsewhere. He is also the editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter, a publication focused on the business and politics of cancer. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Born in Moscow, Julia Meitov Hersey moved to the U.S. at the age of nineteen and has been straddling the two cultures ever since. She lives north of Boston, juggling a full-time job and her beloved translation projects. Julia's favorite translation projects include critically acclaimed VITA NOSTRA and its sequel, ASSASSIN OF REALITY, by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, and short stories by H. L. Oldie, Dmitry Bykov, Tatsiana Zamirovskaya, and Daria Raskina. Julia is the winner of the 2021 Science Fiction and Fantasy Rosetta Awards (SFFRA) for best translated work (long form): DAUGHTER FROM THE DARK by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, Harper Voyager, February 2020.

Event address: 
Book Culture
536 W 112th St
New York, NY 10025
The Dissident: A Novel By Paul Goldberg Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9781250208590
Availability: On hand at one or more locations, see product page for details
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - June 6th, 2023