Troy Against All

What is this book about? About American punks and African oil workers. About love and Soviet childhood. What connection can there be between all this? Ask Vadik Goldner, and he will answer you in a mix of Russian, English, and Portuguese. The hero of Alexander Stesin's new novel has lived several lives: a schoolboy-emigrant, a young hardcore punk, a successful lawyer in Angola… "Troy Against All" is a book about how the experience of the past unexpectedly breaks through into our present. By narrating the hero's coming-of-age story on three continents, the author refreshes the classic genre of "Bildungsroman" in his own way. The soundtrack here alternates between sensual Portuguese fado and furious hardcore, which is equally loved in the slums of the Angolan capital and in a sleepy American town with a Homeric name. Alexander Stesin is a poet, prose writer, traveler, and doctor, the author of the books "By the Way of Tea" (2017), "New York Detour" (2019), "The African Book" (2020), "Birds of Life" (2021), and others, a laureate of the "Russian Prize" (2014) and the literary prize "NOS" (2019).