cover image The Seventh Wife

The Seventh Wife

Andrei Moscovit, Igor' Markovich Efimov. Baskerville Publishers, $23 (468pp) ISBN 978-1-880909-16-4

In chatty, fast-paced prose, this lively picaresque novel captures the bewilderment and naive exuberance of newcomers to America's shores. Anton Sebich, a middle-aged insurance agent turned radio-show host, whose six former wives and 10 children have left him bankrupt, receives a distress call from his first wife. Their oldest child has mysteriously fled the U.S. and is somewhere within the former Soviet Union. Aided by his former father-in-law, a cat-food magnate, Anton sets off on a yacht across the high seas to bring back his daughter. High-spirited run-ins with sea pirates and German terrorists are punctuated by Anton's reminiscences about his disastrous marriages. Ever an optimist, Anton immediately hooks up with Melada, a young Russian woman who joins him and his crew as a translator. As Anton plunges into Russian society with Melada at his side, the author pulls out all the stops, slyly satirizing the whole of the Russian literary canon. Continuing the search for his daughter, Anton progresses ever deeper into the Russian countryside--and falls ever deeper in love with Melada. Moscovit's broad humor keenly depicts people who straddle two cultures, and the inevitable mix-ups that occur when those cultures collide. Moscovit (a pseudonym) was a professor of thermodynamics in Leningrad; this novel, the third of his works to be translated into English, was a bestseller in Russia. (May)