CALLING UKRAINE
April 11, 2023
Marysue Rucci Books/Scribner
Available for preorder now 

“Johannes Lichtman's great subject is morally compromised idealism, and he brings to it an electric intelligence and an allergy to ready-made judgments. Calling Ukraine is the funniest tragedy I've ever read, or maybe the saddest comedy; it's also a merciless dissection of American moral vanity. Lichtman's brilliance lies in showing how all our categories—for books, for people—are inadequate. He's one of the most exciting novelists working today.” – Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness and What Belongs to You

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“Lichtman’s delightful, gripping novel offers screwball banter, a send-up of American start-up culture, an expat romance with a dark Hitchockian left turn, a hero who, despite chronically second-guessing himself, has a knack for saying the wrong thing, and the perception-enhancing defamiliarization that only happens when an innocent with fine antennae ventures abroad—in this case, to Ukraine, a country whose tensions are deftly shown by Lichtman to be crucial to our political moment. In Calling Ukraine, American economic exploitation, sugar-coated with do-gooderism, meets its match in Ukraine’s pragmatism, black humor, and strength.” –Caleb Crain, author of Overthrow and Necessary Errors