PRAISE FOR LEVITT'S PREVIOUS WORK - STALIN'S BARBER

Levitt is ambitiously epic. . . . With equal parts comedy and tragedy, Levitt vividly illustrates the darkly humorous experience of life in a totalitarian state, where no one can be trusted and the law is removed from reason. . . . The novel soars when Levitt brings [all of] the strands together in the second half.

— Publishers Weekly


This fascinating novel is easy to admire . . . [it] captures [the] horror [of Stalin’s 1930s Russia] and yet maintains an undercurrent of absurdist humor. . . . Levitt’s powerful narrative variously suggests Chaplin’s Great Dictator, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Voltaire’s Candide, Heller’s Catch-22 and Brecht’s Mother Courage, but remains an entirely original, entirely remarkable work of the imagination. — The Washington Post


Let’s just leave it that this is tale well-told (no surprise, the author is a playwright), full of philosophy and surreal humor, excellent characters and gripping action, to say nothing of some good history. That the protagonist is a barber offers an exceedingly intimate view of things we might previously have thought to be rather grand scale. — Russian Life

Readers’ joy in peeling back the layers of this historical novel for themselves. Let’s just leave it that this is tale well told (no surprise the author is a playwright), full of philosophy and surreal humor, excellent characters and gripping action, to say nothing of some good history. That the protagonist is a barber offers an exceedingly intimate view of things we might previously have thought to be rather grand scale. — Russian Review