The Dissident

April 15, 2023
Viktor Moroz, an engineer and well-known Jewish refusenik in mid-1970s Moscow, is offered a Faustian bargain by the KGB after he is seen fleeing a murder scene. Viktor has discovered the dead bodies of his friend Albert Schwartz, a gay human rights activist and provider of goods and services, and a U.S. official with suspected ties to the CIA. They have both been killed with an ax. If he finds the murderer, Viktor will be allowed to leave the USSR along with his new wife, Oksana, a teacher and clandestine publisher. If he refuses to collaborate with the KGB, he will be put on trial for the murder himself--not a look the state wants with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger soon arriving for nuclear talks. Viktor knows that the better naysayers like him are known in the West, the less likely it is they will be arrested. But he also is familiar with the documented theory that people who are threatened with prosecution in an antisemitic case like his "will eventually prevail." The book is populated by spies, intellectuals, dissidents, diplomats, and others with secret lives including Madison "Mad Dog" Dymshitz, the shifty young Moscow bureau chief of an American newspaper, and Mikhail Kiselenko, a Russian Orthodox priest of Jewish descent. The Master and Margarita, The Cherry Orchard, and the samizdat literary movement play major roles here, as does The Laws of Jewish Life, a Canadian do-it-yourself guide to Judaism. The book sometimes bogs down in dialectics and broadsides: "Kissinger is about Kissinger. Kissinger would not have stood in the way of the Nazis throwing Jews in concentration camps, his own grandparents included." But this is another strong performance by Goldberg--after The Yid (2016) and The Chateau (2018)--a master at dissecting divided souls. A smart, satirically streaked novel.

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May 1, 2023
This enjoyably absurd if sometimes unwieldy Cold War farce from Goldberg (The Chateau) is set in the mid-’70s Soviet Union and begins with Viktor Moroz, a Jewish “refusenik” and the titular dissident, discovering a gruesome double murder on his wedding day. The KGB knows that Viktor, who is desperate to leave the U.S.S.R. and emigrate to Israel with his new wife, Oksana, was at the scene of the murders, and gives him nine days to solve the crimes, lest he become a suspect himself. But this is no ordinary whodunit: Goldberg goes for something much more kaleidoscopic, introducing an enormous cast of characters (including several real-life figures, Henry Kissinger among them) and peppering the narrative with lengthy asides on literature, history, and geopolitics. The result often trades narrative thrust for painstaking portraiture of Soviet Jewish life, but Goldberg is an impressively encyclopedic guide. Readers looking for an ambitious, off the beaten path comedic mystery will find plenty to enjoy. Agent: Josh Getzler, HG Literary.

May 1, 2023
Goldberg's genre-defying thriller mixes political reflections, historical perspectives, philosophical musings, and the author's personal take on the culture and society of Russia, where he lived until he was 14. Set in 1976, when the Cold War still raged and the U.S. planned a historical visit to Moscow by Henry Kissinger to meet Leonid Brezhnev, the story features Viktor, an engineer turned refusenik, and his wife, Oksana. Both are desperate to escape Russia and resettle in Israel, but in the current climate, that seems impossible. When Viktor stumbles on a brutal murder--a dissident and an American diplomat axed to death--he decides not to report it, fearing he'll be blamed. But things turn more complicated when a "curator" for the KGB offers Viktor and Oksana the chance to leave Russia if they can solve the murders before Kissinger's visit. In a plot that's as quirky, disjointed, and complex as it is mesmerizing, eclectic, and intriguing, Goldberg, who harbors mixed feelings about Russia, offers vivid characters, informative insights into history, language, culture, and politics, and a sad but convincing ending. Not an easy read, but a unique one.

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Starred review from May 1, 2023

Nonfiction and fiction author Goldberg (The Yid was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature) eschews run-of-the-mill Cold War spy novel tropes in this darkly comic tale. Viktor Morov, a Jewish refusenik stuck in Moscow, is fruitlessly waiting for the Soviet government to approve his application to emigrate to Israel. On the evening of his wedding in January 1976, he stumbles upon the horrific scene of two gay men axed to death in their bed. Fleeing does Viktor little good; he's soon confronted by his secret KGB "curator," who tells him he has two options: take the blame for the murders or find the killer before a diplomatic visit by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger eight days away. There begins the journey that wraps up Viktor, his new bride Oksana, and a clutch of their Jewish intelligentsia friends in a time-ticking quest to find the killer. Goldberg follows his retinue of vivid characters as they drink vodka to excess, soliloquize on the joys of Bulgakov, and consider the state of the Soviet society to which the Jewish refuseniks say "no." VERDICT A refreshing and literary take on the genre that appeals to the intellect as well as the pulse.--Peggy Kurkowski

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