The Patriots by Sana Krasikov

A 538-page debut novel set across continents and over 74 years of personal and political turmoil certainly shows intent. Largely living up to it, Krasikov’s sweeping epic – likened to Dr. Zhivago by Yann Martel – is at its lesser moments a Soviet-era soap opera, and at its best, a believable and astonishingly accomplished tapestry of lives caught between the turning cogs of history.

In 1934, Florence Fein travels from the US to become part of the Soviet dream, only to have her idealism eroded by repression then terror. Her son Julien returns to Moscow in 2008, to retrieve his son Lenny, mired in the gangster capitalism of the modern state; a neat inversion of the dangers of the past. There feels a sepia filtered romanticism to Florence’s early third person passages, possibly an intentional creative flourish to demonstrate the passage of time. Julien’s first person narrative offers the most clear and effective voice; a cynic with a foot in both the past and present. One who condemns his mother’s naïve idealism, yet also his son's life choices; Julien’s hide was toughened by Soviet realities while the US-raised Lenny (at times an underused plot device) is flabby in both constitution and character.

There are many fine non-fiction accounts of suffering under the Bolsheviks, but fewer novels. Here is one echoing the consequences of idealism and nationalism down the generations, from the vantage point of history. A tragic, poetic and intimate epic. [Alan Bett]