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About
Praise for Good Citizens Need Not Fear
Finalist for the 2020 Writers' Trust Fiction Prize • Finalist for the 2020 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize • Winner of the 2020 • Kobzar Book Award • A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year • A Guardian Best Book of the Year
"Bright, funny, satirical and relevant. . . . A new talent to watch!"
-Margaret Atwood
"Good Citizens Need Not Fear is the funniest, most politically astute book I've read in years. Reva's pitch perfect tone--especially at that comic junction where the absurdity of a system rigged to control human beings collides with actual humans-is bang-on brilliant."
-Miriam Toews
"Creative, poignant, and darkly hilarious, Good Citizens Need Not Fear is full of relevant questions about resistance, corruption, and maintaining dignity against the dehumanizing power of the State. This is an outstanding first book."
-Anthony Doerr
"Luminous. These stories speak with humour yet real emotion of the heaviness of totalitarian systems and show how the light of our humanity still shines through. Terrific stuff."
-Yann Martel
"Maria Reva is a miracle writer: how else to explain how dark and suffused with light these stories are, how genuinely hilarious and very serious, how entertaining and thought provoking? You've never read anything like them, and together they make an incredible, strange, & deeply exciting book."
-Elizabeth McCracken
"Dazzling...With their big, delightful dollops of surrealism and absurdity, these stories conjure up from the old Soviet-era Ukraine a world that feels, with its hall-of-mirrors twists and torques, uncannily-alarmingly!-on point and up-to-date. Good Citizens Need Not Fear marks the beginning of what is sure to be a long, strong career for the brilliant Maria Reva."
-Ben Fountain
"I have never read anything like these radiant stories. They are true originals- funny, devastating, and containing a weird, wild energy. These citizens, living in the literally collapsing buildings of Ukraine, will not be crushed or silenced. They have something urgent to say about where we are today."
-Deb Olin Unferth
"Witheringly incisive and consistently pitch-perfect, Good Citizens Need Not Fear is nothing short of a comic triumph."
-The Globe and Mail
"Maria Reva's enthralling debut of interlinked short stories achieves the double effect of timelessness and timeliness. The emotional impact of this book is cumulative. This is partly down to her mastery of the form: the stories are connected by a unity of place, time and relationship. More importantly, they are brought to life by Reva's handling of darkness and light."
-The Guardian
"One of the leading post-Soviet writers of her generation while breaking through the limitations of the term itself. . . . [Reva] proves to be an incredible builder of worlds."
-The Atlantic
"These immersive linked stories grapple with Ukrainian history through the waning years of the USSR and birth pangs of democracy. . . . Reva's characters spark off the page as they confront a brutal bureaucratic past with the only tool they possess-hope."
-O, The Oprah Magazine
"Innovative, bitingly funny."
-Entertainment Weekly
"A magic trick of a book: a dark and scathingly funny set of interconnected stories, each one alive with originality, that nonetheless leave the reader immersed in the very wholeness of these characters and their place in the world. Erased and ground down, Reva's good citizens rise up and shine, insisting that their existence matters in harrowing and surreal and sometimes hilarious detail, as she proves the importance of writing toward the light, even-or especially-in the darkest times."
-2020 Writers Trust Fiction Prize jury (Elisabeth de Mariaffi, Waub
Finalist for the 2020 Writers' Trust Fiction Prize • Finalist for the 2020 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize • Winner of the 2020 • Kobzar Book Award • A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year • A Guardian Best Book of the Year
"Bright, funny, satirical and relevant. . . . A new talent to watch!"
-Margaret Atwood
"Good Citizens Need Not Fear is the funniest, most politically astute book I've read in years. Reva's pitch perfect tone--especially at that comic junction where the absurdity of a system rigged to control human beings collides with actual humans-is bang-on brilliant."
-Miriam Toews
"Creative, poignant, and darkly hilarious, Good Citizens Need Not Fear is full of relevant questions about resistance, corruption, and maintaining dignity against the dehumanizing power of the State. This is an outstanding first book."
-Anthony Doerr
"Luminous. These stories speak with humour yet real emotion of the heaviness of totalitarian systems and show how the light of our humanity still shines through. Terrific stuff."
-Yann Martel
"Maria Reva is a miracle writer: how else to explain how dark and suffused with light these stories are, how genuinely hilarious and very serious, how entertaining and thought provoking? You've never read anything like them, and together they make an incredible, strange, & deeply exciting book."
-Elizabeth McCracken
"Dazzling...With their big, delightful dollops of surrealism and absurdity, these stories conjure up from the old Soviet-era Ukraine a world that feels, with its hall-of-mirrors twists and torques, uncannily-alarmingly!-on point and up-to-date. Good Citizens Need Not Fear marks the beginning of what is sure to be a long, strong career for the brilliant Maria Reva."
-Ben Fountain
"I have never read anything like these radiant stories. They are true originals- funny, devastating, and containing a weird, wild energy. These citizens, living in the literally collapsing buildings of Ukraine, will not be crushed or silenced. They have something urgent to say about where we are today."
-Deb Olin Unferth
"Witheringly incisive and consistently pitch-perfect, Good Citizens Need Not Fear is nothing short of a comic triumph."
-The Globe and Mail
"Maria Reva's enthralling debut of interlinked short stories achieves the double effect of timelessness and timeliness. The emotional impact of this book is cumulative. This is partly down to her mastery of the form: the stories are connected by a unity of place, time and relationship. More importantly, they are brought to life by Reva's handling of darkness and light."
-The Guardian
"One of the leading post-Soviet writers of her generation while breaking through the limitations of the term itself. . . . [Reva] proves to be an incredible builder of worlds."
-The Atlantic
"These immersive linked stories grapple with Ukrainian history through the waning years of the USSR and birth pangs of democracy. . . . Reva's characters spark off the page as they confront a brutal bureaucratic past with the only tool they possess-hope."
-O, The Oprah Magazine
"Innovative, bitingly funny."
-Entertainment Weekly
"A magic trick of a book: a dark and scathingly funny set of interconnected stories, each one alive with originality, that nonetheless leave the reader immersed in the very wholeness of these characters and their place in the world. Erased and ground down, Reva's good citizens rise up and shine, insisting that their existence matters in harrowing and surreal and sometimes hilarious detail, as she proves the importance of writing toward the light, even-or especially-in the darkest times."
-2020 Writers Trust Fiction Prize jury (Elisabeth de Mariaffi, Waub