Between Dog and Wolf

Moscow, 1985. Four teenagers – Anya, Milka, Petya and Aleksey, whose lives, like those of their Western counterparts, are fuelled by sex, alcohol and cigarettes – yearn for a world of Levi’s, Queen, foreign travel and the freedom to choose their fates. Instead, they encounter heartbreak and tragedy, while all around them Soviet policies, cruel but familiar, are giving way to untested concepts such as glasnost and perestroika and a brief flourishing of hope before the next repressive regime take root. This is the hour between dog and wolf, twilight, when one state has ended and another has not quite begun. Although it depicts a chaotic and desperate era, this exceptional debut novel pulsates with life. It is radiant with friendship and love, the power of international literature, values and politics, as its characters struggle to survive, to save their country and one another. Praise ‘At last, from Russia, the voice of a woman of my generation, writing in Between Dog and Wolf of dancing with other girls at school discos before Brezhnev died, of learning to love in a cold climate, and of navigating the choppy waters of the past. I so enjoyed this novel.’ — Sara Wheeler, author of Mud and Stars: Travels with Pushkin and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age ‘Achingly sad.’ — New York Post ‘Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry shows us what it was like to be a teenager – full of friendship, love and hormones – during the chaos of perestroika. What a decade: so many different communist leaders, the collapse of an empire, terrifying coups, and the growth of powerful oligarchs. Full of heartbreak, beautifully written. I swallowed it up.’ — Suzanne Joinson, author of A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar ‘Between Dog and Wolf depicts friendship with all the passionate intensity of a Ferrante novel – against the rich encyclopaedic detail of late Soviet life.’ — Sasha Dugdale, writer and translator, including In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova ‘A timeless tale of memory, desire, dreams lost and altered, love changed and unchanged.’ — Yiyun Li, author of Must I Go ‘A remarkable novel. Gorcheva-Newberry combines a timeless story of loss and longing with a viscerally personal account of Russia’s recent past. Fizzing with life as much as it is suffused with unbearable sadness, the book perfectly captures the discombobulations of perestroika: the hope and the disappointment of the new – and a yearning for what might have been.‘ — Ben Noble, author of Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future? ‘[A] Stunning debut . . . Gorcheva-Newberry pulls off a tragic and nostalgic love letter to a much-tried generation. This is a winner.’ — Publishers weekly (starred review) ‘Gorcheva-Newberry does the reader a great service, offering a peek behind the iron curtain and its veil of propoganda . . . If there is such a thing as clear-eyed sentimentality, Between Dog and Wolf evokes it.’ — Bookpage (starred review) ‘Gorcheva-Newberry conveys the poignance of adolescent urgency with a poet’s elliptical dash Between Dog and Wolf is a great pleasure.’ — Christine Schutt, author of Pure Hollywood ‘One system yields to another that ends up looking mighty similar to the one that came before, and with each upheaval comes a steep price that citizens are forced to pay. Gorcheva-Newberry beautifully renders these historical trends using Chekhov as a blueprint in this moving, tragic, and distinctly Russian tale.’ — Harvard Review ‘An intensely evocative and gorgeously written coming-of-age story.’ — Minneapolis Star Tribune (Starred) ‘In Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry’s debut, it is the children of the Perestroika generation who offer lived stories of growth and survival despite a destabilized world.’ — Caitlin Stout, Chicago Review of Books ‘A magnificent story about the desperate times of Generation Perestroika . . . Rich with imagery . . . A tour de force.’ — Mark Zvonkovic, Midwest Book Review ‘Every reader knows what it’s like to lose a friend, but not everyone knows the loss of a nation. Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry knows both. Her novel immerses us in the tense, passionate, bloody best friendship of two unforgettable young women in the last years of the Soviet state. It is aching and sexy, clear-eyed and heartbreaking, honest and necessary. You will devour it. Between Dog and Wolf is an exquisite, explosive debut.’ — Julia Phillips, author of Disappearing Earth ‘Charming and tragic, hopeful and disillusioned, profoundly intimate and sensitive to history, Between Dog and Wolf evokes Soviet perestroika in all its contradictions. With exquisite lyricism, Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry recalls what it meant to grow up in Moscow in the 1980s, when both she and her nation were on the cusp of unknowable futures.’ — Ken Kalfus, author of Envy and 2 A.M. in Little America ‘A beautiful portrayal of life lived in enormous change and upheaval, rooted in the history of a vast country. It is a novel worth of the master, Chekhov, whose great play we see echoed in it.’ — Richard Bausch, author of Peace ‘Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry has given us a deeply personal coming-of-age story with the unapologetic sensuality and impressive scope of a Gabriel García Márquez novel . . . This is a sublime novel.’ — Christine Sneed, author of The Virginity of Famous Men and Paris, He Said ‘Beautiful novelistic debut . . . Gorcheva-Newberry is among the most subtle and evocative writers I have read in many years. This novel is a gem, and its author is a major new voice in contemporary fiction. This may be the first time you’ve heard of her. But it will not be the last.’ — Steve Yarborough, author of The Unmade World ‘Extraordinary. Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry delivers an electrifying novel, brimming with passion, pathos, and searing insights into Russia’s turbulent and richly-textured past. I literally didn’t want the novel to end.’ — Jennifer Cody Epstein, author of Wunderland ‘Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry exquisitely chronicles the pervasive losses and loves of her four unforgettable ‘perestroika generation’ characters. Between Dog and Wolf is a fitting homage to the great Chekhov himself.’ — Cristina García, author of Here in Berlin and Dreaming in Cuban ‘It’s a beautiful, intelligent perspective to depict, punctuated with a deeply personal characterisation of young life during the period – summer memories spent in dachas with best friends, knowing Queen lyrics by heart – that examines how the impatience of teenhood traverses through a world opening up to new pathways in a tale of survival, love, politics, and ambition.’ — Chloë Edwards, Buzz Magazine