The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street

A Russian Adventure
Pieter Waterdrinker (trans. Paul Evans)

“[Waterdrinker] interweaves memoir and history in this impressionistic account of Russia from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution to the present day … [he] incisively captures the beauty and terror of his adopted country … Russophiles will savor this iconoclastic portrait of modern Russia.”

Publishers Weekly

“The recreations of revolutionary Russia are vivid (including his hatred of the Tsar, Lenin and Stalin) as is the daily reality of living in glasnost Russia. There are some positively Dostoevskian characters, and [Pieter Waterdrinker's] portrait of Russia caught at twin moments of upheaval (1917, 1988) is an epic tale told with deceptive simplicity.”

Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen, The Sydney Morning Herald

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“Words by Waterdrinker are as amazing as a superior circus.”

Elsevier

“How evocatively Waterdrinker can write! A hundred years after the Russian Revolution, he makes this violent period of history shine once again.”

Zin

“Waterdrinker’s gift for savage comedy and his war correspondent’s eye have few contemporary equivalents.”

Simon Ings, The Times

“An octogenarian aristocrat cooped up in a decrepit Soviet madhouse, doctors requiring bribes before even considering treating patients, the wife of a Russian president touring Amsterdam's red-light district, lust-driven physicists embezzling foreign aid programs, the mad monk Rasputin. These are just a handful of the memorable characters Pieter Waterdrinker draws in his idiosyncratic, darkly humorous, captivating blend of memoir, history, and reportage that spans Russia's last century. It's a terrific read that will engage and inform in equal measure.”

Gordon Peake, The Canberra Times

Praise for Lenin's Balsem:

“A book with an exotic elegance.”

de Volkskrant

Praise for Lenin's Balsem:

“A hilarious quest, written in a wonderful baroque style.”

De Telegraaf

Praise for The Death of Mila Burger:

“In many respects The Death of Mila Burger is a novel about twenty-first-century Russia, dished up according to the laws of the nineteenth-century novel. Fluent, expressive, amusing.”

NRC Handelsblad

Praise for The Death of Mila Burger:

“The Death of Mila Burger is a classic tragedy. It is quality prose. Exuberant in a rather un-Dutch way.”

Vrij Nederland

“In this compelling memoir … Waterdrinker recounts the awful and at the same time great decades that gave Russians a radically redefined role on the world stage … An intensely personal perspective on geopolitical transformation.”

Bryce Christensen, Booklist, starred review

In 1988, at the age of 26, Pieter Waterdrinker was at home in the Netherlands one day when a man knocked on his door and asked him to smuggle a shipment of bibles into the USSR. The resulting adventure would lead to a lifelong journey into Russia and its history.

Waterdrinker would eventually find himself living in Saint Petersburg, with his Russian wife and three cats, on a street which a hundred years earlier had been the epicentre of the 1917 Russian Revolution. In The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street he tells its story, from the fall of the Tsar to the collapse of the USSR, blending history with memoir to create an ode to the divided soul of Russia and an unputdownable account of his own struggles with life, literature and love.

“Words by Waterdrinker are as amazing as a superior circus.”
—Elsevier

“How evocatively Waterdrinker can write! A hundred years after the Russian Revolution, he makes this violent period of history shine once again.”
—Zin

Publishers Weekly

Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen, The Sydney Morning Herald

View all reviews

“Words by Waterdrinker are as amazing as a superior circus.”

Elsevier

“How evocatively Waterdrinker can write! A hundred years after the Russian Revolution, he makes this violent period of history shine once again.”

Zin

“Waterdrinker’s gift for savage comedy and his war correspondent’s eye have few contemporary equivalents.”

Simon Ings, The Times

Gordon Peake, The Canberra Times

Praise for Lenin's Balsem:

“A book with an exotic elegance.”

de Volkskrant

Praise for Lenin's Balsem:

“A hilarious quest, written in a wonderful baroque style.”

De Telegraaf

Praise for The Death of Mila Burger:

“In many respects The Death of Mila Burger is a novel about twenty-first-century Russia, dished up according to the laws of the nineteenth-century novel. Fluent, expressive, amusing.”

NRC Handelsblad

Praise for The Death of Mila Burger:

“The Death of Mila Burger is a classic tragedy. It is quality prose. Exuberant in a rather un-Dutch way.”

Vrij Nederland

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Details

Format:Hardback

Size: 9.2in × 6in

Extent:416pp

ISBN (13):9781950354887

RRP:$30.00

Pub date:4 Apr 2022

High-res cover:Download Image

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AUTHOR

Pieter Waterdrinker

Pieter Waterdrinker (born 1961, Haarlem) is one of the most successful novelists in contemporary Dutch literature, praised for his compelling voice. He studied Russian at the University of Amsterdam, and was a long-time correspondent at the leading Dutch daily De Telegraaf. His literary work has often been translated and longlisted for awards, and his last novel The Rat of Amsterdam is a critically acclaimed bestseller. He lives between Saint Petersburg and the South of France.

TRANSLATOR

Paul Evans

Paul Evans is a Welsh poet and writer. He has published poetry in Britain and Holland, and translations of Dutch poetry, drama, and fiction with Faber and Seren. His translated plays have been performed at The Old Vic and The Guggenheim. His latest poetry collection is Grand Larcenies (Carcanet, 2021).