The Red Passport: Stories

By Katherine Shonk

Book Overview

A beguiling debut collection set in the "New Russia" about love, dislocation, and the struggle to get a foothold in a changing world The eight unpredictable, poignant, and often comic stories that make up Katherine Shonk's The Red Passport portray the tumult, hopes, and disappointments of Russians and visiting Americans alike in post-Communist Russia. Many of the Russians in these stories are strangers in their own country, learning to navigate a new landscape of Dunkin Donuts franchises that flourish where consumer culture had so recently been anathema; where the fall of the Soviet Union has not in fact brought about peace or prosperity; and where people still find a way to reach out and for love, despite often disastrous results. "My Mother's Garden" reads like a parable of broken promises--an old woman living near Chernobyl does not understand why she can't eat those robust, lovely, enormous onions, better than any she'd grown for decades. "Our American" is set in Moscow and tells the story of a thirteen year old boy who watches with fascination and dread as his older brother, a veteran of the Chechen war, pursues the na?ve American girl next door. "The Young People of Moscow" describes an extraordinary day in the life of an aging Russian couple selling Soviet poetry in an underground bazaar. In her elegantly crafted stories Shonk delves deeply into these people, finding both the nub of their disappointment and the truth of their good intentions. Describing a place that is at once exotic and disconcertingly familiar, The Red Passport is a moving and startling book that doles out amazement and delight in equal measure.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374248478
• ISBN13: 9780374248475
• Release Date: November 2003
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.8" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Simplciity shrouds complexity in this fine collection

As I've lived in Russia, the Red Passport rang a lot of bells. Apart from reflecting with considerable verisimilitude certain attitudes in Russia albeit from an American point of view, the difficulty of writing simple, successful prose while embodying complex truths is the main reason I wholeheartedly recommend this collection. I usually read non-fiction and this was the first collection of contemporary short stories I've read for a long time but also one of the finest and I was transfixed throughout.

A Showcase for the Craft of the Short Story

Bravo to Katherine Shonk--The Red Passport is a welcome and rare showcase for the classic craft of the American short story. Katherine's characters (sometimes bursting with youth and other times exhausted from life's trials) are both unique and universal. She shares an understanding of human experience and modern-day Russian that, along with her wonderful ear for language and eye for surroundings, draws her characters to life on the page. Her style is clear and captivating, each metaphor a little miracle. I look forward to more from this outstanding American author.

Lovely and Amazing

The Red Passport is gem of a book. On one level, Shonk is exploring Russian and American perceptions (and misperceptions) of each other. In that respect, it makes a fascinating cultural study. The stories are precise and melancholy comedies (or tragedies) of cross-cultural manners. But the book really sticks with you for another reason: Shonk gets under her characters' skin and reveals them in all their yearning and weakness. The sentences are lucid and beautiful, yet the writing is never showy. You get to the last page and long for more. Shonk, with her generosity and restraint, is a gift to contemporary American literature. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't love this book.

Above-par

This collection of stories set in Russia is a rare find. Shonk is a really terrific, hugely promising writer - I haven't picked up a book in a while and kept falling through layers, finding that it's even better and deeper than I'd at first realized. Very good.

Profound work!!!

This is a wise, sensitive, warm book which illustrates what happens when people reach out for one another across language barriers and internal barriers. Here is an author who shows the Russian people as they are, human, heartbreaking and courageous. Ms. Shonk deftly treats all her charactors and their struggles equally, so invariably both American and Russian charactors speak the same universal language of loss and hope. I have never been to Russia, but I felt instantly transported there, and saw many similarities between our peoples. So, the only prerequisite for this book is an interest in human nature. READ IT!!! You'll be happy you did!