Keith Gessen

Keith Gessen is a founding editor of n+1 and teaches at Columbia Journalism School. He has written two novels, All the Sad Young Literary Men and A Terrible Country.

Letter

Not nonsense, alas

10 September 2014

Keith Gessen replies: My apologies. The order in question, warning against ‘sabotage’ of the partial military mobilisation, came from the Ministry of Defence. It was accompanied by orders for speedy compliance from the university administration, under a Ministry of Education letterhead. The University of Kharkiv, more formally the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, is one of the oldest and...
Letter

Run on the Rouble

20 November 2008

Just before New Year, I went to the Sberbank and transferred my grandmother’s life savings out of roubles and into a new account denominated in dollars, as I threatened to do in my Diary (LRB, 20 November 2008). It took a while, because the Sberbank clerk wasn’t satisfied with the forms I brought authorising me to use the account: she kept calling someone at headquarters and saying, ‘I have someone...

One​ of my parents’ favourite Soviet films is called Autumn Marathon. Its main character, an academic translator, is living a double life. Out of divided loyalties rather than greed or...

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Degoogled: Keith Gessen

Joanna Biggs, 22 May 2008

Sad young and literary in 1938 and you could at least prove yourself opposing Hitler, sad young and literary in 1968 and you could demonstrate in Grosvenor Square, but what if you had the...

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