Olga Grushin
Novels
Click on individual covers for more information
THE CHARMED WIFE
(Available January 2021)
FORTY ROOMS
(2016)
THE DREAM LIFE OF SUKHANOV
(2006)
For the list of selected short stories and nonfiction, please click here.
For foreign rights, please click here.
Bio
Olga Grushin is the author of four novels. Her first novel, The Dream Life of Sukhanov (2006), won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and earned her a place on Granta's once-a-decade Best Young American Novelists list. Her books have appeared on The New York Times' 100 Notable Books of the Year and The Washington Post's Ten Best Books of the Year lists. She has published short stories and nonfiction in The New York Times, Partisan Review, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and elsewhere.
Grushin was born in Moscow, spent her childhood in Prague, and moved to the United States at the age of eighteen, becoming the first Russian citizen to receive an American college degree. She writes in English, and her work has been translated into sixteen languages. She lives outside Washington, DC, with her two children.
@ Libor Fojtík
In the Press
Early praise for
THE CHARMED WIFE
“The comedy is devastating in this autopsy of a marriage that dies of 'happily ever after' syndrome. Seldom has such emotional realism been spied in the precincts of wild magic. This alumna of the Cinderella marriage is overwhelmed, over-enchanted, and so over it. Fall under its charms, I dare you.” –Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked
"With the publication of her first novel, Grushin instantly became one of my favorite writers. She touches the borders of myth and fairytale in everything she does, but never so explicitly as here, in this dark and dreamy retelling of Cinderella. Inside the plot, magic comes and goes. But inside the reader, it's all magic, all of us happily caught in Grushin's hypnotic spell." –Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and The Jane Austen Book Club
"In The Charmed Wife, Olga Grushin turns the fairy tale romance on its head, and then just keeps turning it, playfully, subversively, brilliantly: a feat of fierce imagination." –Jess Walter, author of The Cold Millions and Beautiful Ruins
“The Charmed Wife is a thought-provoking, wickedly clever, and beautifully written fairy tale character study that enchants at every turn. Olga Grushin dissects fairy tales, marriage, and the messy human heart with a pen as sharp as any scalpel.” –Melissa Bashardoust, author of Girl, Serpent, Thorn
"Lush and powerful, The Charmed Wife is brimful of magic and the seething darkness that lies beneath the glittering surface of every good fairy tale." –Leife Shallcross, author of The Beast's Heart
Praise for previous
novels
Enough material to warrant hours of contemplation . . . The reader's impulse to grapple with the text, to wrestle it down and to raise objections or to attempt to identify her own place in the context of the story, is a sign not of weakness, but of Grushin's genius. This is a text that rewards rereading and demands engagement.
A tale of consummate beauty. Like a diamond with countless facets—utterly brilliant. Recommended ecstatically.
The Dream Life of Sukhanov is the work of a true artist, a novel that many writers many years older than Grushin and far more renowned would happily, merrily claim as their own. . . . in its expansiveness, its refusal to dwell in the tiny palace of self, it harks back to the great Russian masters. In so doing, it breathes new life into American literary fiction, which for some time has been in dire need of just such an infusion.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Starred review,
LIBRARY JOURNAL
Jonathan Yardley,
THE WASHINGTON POST
Click here to read what other critics say about FORTY ROOMS
Click here to read what other critics say about THE LINE
Click here to read what other critics say about THE DREAM LIFE OF SUKHANOV
News & Events
WHAT'S NEW
The Charmed Wife will be published by Putnam on January 12, 2021.
In the UK, the novel was acquired by Hodder & Stoughton (read the news announcement here), and will appear on January 21, 2021.
EVENTS
Virtual bookstore appearances to be announced.
Contact
Literary agent: Warren Frazier, John Hawkins and Associates
Film/TV agent: Jill Gillett, WME Agency
Publicity: Elora Weil, Putnam
Contact Olga directly: olga@olgagrushin.com
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