RUBBLE OF RUBLES

A would-be wine importer finds himself enmeshed in a Russian espionage plot.

In the wake of turmoil in both his personal and professional lives, an American man named David travels to Russia in the mid-2000s seeking to start a new career as a wine importer. Readers expecting a predictable story of a midlife crisis abroad will be surprised by where Novakovich’s novel heads. As David observes at one point, “My love of Russia was an illness, a self-destructive vortex”—and that vortex takes him to some decidedly strange places. An arrest for public urination finds David in an increasingly high-stakes legal nightmare, one in which he is imprisoned and regularly shaken down for bribes. (A confirmed bibliophile, David frequently comments on the limited selection of books available to him in prison.) At one point, David raises the possibility of his meeting Vladimir Putin when talking with the prison’s warden: “There could be several novels about Putin. Maybe a trilogy? Putin’s judo youth, Putin in DDR, Putin in Grozny. Can I talk to him?” And then Putin shows up, trying out judo moves on the residents of the prison, and becomes convinced that David would be the perfect person to carry out a sinister mission overseas. David tries to explore the possibility of a nonviolent task instead—“You know, I’d rather not kill anybody. Could I just interview you and publish your biography?”—but is rebuffed and finds himself en route to Georgia. “Maybe I could consider myself an FSB agent? Maybe I was?” he ponders. But throughout the madcap plotting, a pervasive sense of menace never dissipates.

An international comedy of errors that ventures to knowingly bleak places.