{"product_id":"the-underground-9780989983242","title":"The Underground","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eNamed one of “the best Russian novels of the 21st Century,” \u003ci\u003eThe Underground\u003c\/i\u003e is the unforgettable story of an abandoned mixed-race boy navigating the wondrous and terrifying city of Moscow before the Soviet Union’s collapse.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I am Moscow’s underground son, the result of one too many nights on the town.” So begins the story of Mbobo, the precocious 12-year-old narrator of this captivating novel by exiled Uzbek author and BBC journalist Hamid Ismailov. Born to a Siberian woman and an African athlete who came to compete in the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Mbobo must navigate the complexities of being a fatherless, mixed-raced boy in the shaky terrain of the Soviet Union before its collapse. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith echoes of Ralph Ellison’s \u003ci\u003eInvisible Man\u003c\/i\u003e and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, Ismailov’s novel tackles head-on the problems of race and the relationship between the individual and society in a thoroughly modern context. While paying homage to great Russian authors of the past—Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Gorky, Nabokov, and Pushkin—Ismailov emerges as a master of a new kind of Russian writing that revels in the sordid reality and diversity of the country today. Named one of “the best Russian novels of the 21st Century\" (\u003ci\u003eContinent Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e), \u003ci\u003eThe Underground\u003c\/i\u003e is a dizzying and moving tour of the Soviet capital, on the surface and beneath, before its colossal fall.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Hamid Ismailov","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48287112200443,"sku":"9780989983242","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0779\/3917\/9771\/files\/CoreSourceHub_d7411285-df9d-4324-a22e-45869274a124.jpg?v=1771577331","url":"https:\/\/indiepubs.com\/products\/the-underground-9780989983242","provider":"IndiePubs","version":"1.0","type":"link"}