Irina Reyn's first novel What Happened to Anna K. will be published by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster in August 2008.
Pre-order What Happened to Anna K. today!
A debut novel that skillfully retells the classic tragedy of Anna Karenina by setting it in present-day New York City within a community of Russian-Jewish immigrants.
What Happened to Anna K. on NPR's "Morning Edition"
Advance Praise for What Happened to Anna K.:
“This witty, psychologically astute and immensely pleasurable novel is something of a miracle. By dint of some divine stubbornness, the author has folded the Tolstoyan paradigm of grandeur and regret into our pettier, shallower age, and illuminated both in the process. I know of no recent first novel that has better captured the way we live now, with as assured a sense of comedy and compassion.”
-- Phillip Lopate, author of Waterfront and Portrait of My Body
“Irina Reyn has done the impossible: she has re-imagined one of mankind's very best novels, and made it beautifully her own. That she has not diminished Tolstoy but updated him -- freshened him for the strange, sensuous time in which we live – is as wondrous a feat as I can recall in contemporary fiction.”
-- Darin Strauss, author of Chang and Eng and The Real McCoy
“Two of the older emigre characters in What Happened to Anna K. point out that they survived decades of Stalinism; do they not now deserve Danielle Steele? I would not dare to venture an answer. I will say, though, that what every emigre community does deserve is a few fearless, insightful, and penetrating young voices both to announce an arrival and sing an elegy. Irina Reyn is one of those voices, and her first novel is as charming as it is sad, as funny as it is revelatory.”
-- Tom Bissell, author of God Lives in St. Petersburg and The Father of All Things
“This intricately woven and, frankly, bedazzling novel is more than a retelling of Anna Karenina. It’s a laser sharp portrait of the contemporary Russian-American dream, New York style. Irina Reyn's voice is sophisticated and street smart, and once I became acquainted with her characters I could not put this novel down.”
-- Frederick Reiken, author of The Odd Sea and The Lost Legends of New Jersey
“Irina Reyn's sly wit and perfect-pitch dialogue make this modern-day retelling of Anna Karenina a delight to read. Reyn is a cunning writer who knows her subject--Russian Jewish immigrants in New York City—inside out, and casts a skeptical glance at their habits, aspirations, and thwarted destinies. Readers should love this novel, whether or not they know the original Anna.”
-- Lynne Sharon Schwartz, author of Ruined by Reading and Leaving Brooklyn
“Irina Reyn's debut offers a feisty reimagining of the original tale, with contemporary Russian-Jewish characters in Queens, Manhattan, and Brooklyn brought to vividly detailed life--and with the conundrums and consolations of immigration itself rendered compassionately and smartly.”
-- Martha Cooley, author of The Archivist and Thirty Three Swoons