David Bezmozgis

First noted in the lit world for Natasha, his collection of short stories about Russian-Jewish emigrés in Canada, Bezmozgis moves chronologically backward but artisically forward with new novel The Free World. The tale follows the Krasnanskys, an immigrant family that lands in the Italian waystation of Ladispoli, where many Soviet Jews seeking visas to Israel, Australia and points west landed in 1978.