The Competent Authority

(Hardback)

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'Great is the Soviet Union, vast its territories, warm its entrails...'

1959. Whispers of dissidence are spreading in the U.S.S.R. Texts published in the West are circulating in samizdat, tormenting the secret police. Lieutenant Ivanov of the K.G.B, under pressure from his enraged superiors, is handed the case.

Leads emerge, flare up, vanish. Years pass. 'Abram Tertz' publishes another short story, a new novel, mocking the competent authority. Shielded by his fierce wife Maria Vasilyevna Rozanova, Andrei Sinyavsky, one of the Soviet Union's most renowned and brilliant figures of resistance, waits in his wired apartment, drinking, sure his days as a free man are numbered.

But as Rozanova continues to taunt Ivanov with her cheerful intransigence, a crisis of confidence opens up within the regime's resolve, causing the young lieutenant to wonder, 'are we actually as competent as we claim to be''

With the unique insight afforded by his mother, Rozanova, Gran pays remarkable homage to Andrei Sinyavsky, his father, reimagining the six long years leading up to his infamous arrest, trial and conviction. Framed within a riveting cat-and-mouse dynamic; irreverent and darkly comic, Gran balances a satirical lightness with deeper meditations on dogma and freedom of expression, state control and creative resistance, the ghosts of which, at a time when political criticism is being crushed once again, are as present today as ever before.

Reviews

'A masterpiece' * Le Monde *
'A funny and touching novel' * Temps *
'Iegor Gran recounts this paper chase with a sarcastic tone, ridiculing the actions and words of a regime that promises happiness, but offers terror ... A remarkable portrait of the Soviet Union' * Elle *

Author Bio

Iegor Gran is a French writer who was born in Moscow. Praised for his biting sense of humour and razor-sharp writing, he has won the Grand Prix de l'humour noir.Ruth Diver is an award-winning translator based in New Zealand. Her 2016 joint translation ofThe Reader on the 6.27 was a Waterstones Book of the Month.