The Great Glass Sea: A Novel
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After their father’s death, twin brothers Yarik and Dima grew up together on their uncle’s farm, spending their days helping fishermen and their nights spellbound by their uncle’s stories. Years later, the two men labor at the Oranzheria, a sprawling glass greenhouse and a capitalist experiment that keeps the surrounding townspeople in perpetual daylight.
Work is now all the twins have in common. Stalwart Yarik is married with children, and oppressed by the burden of responsibility and the pressures of work, while dreamer Dima lives with his mother—and rooster—and spends his time planning the brothers’ return to their uncle’s land.
Then one day a bizarre encounter with the Oranzheria’s ruthless owner changes everything. Soon they find themselves at the center of strange conspiracies, disasters, and deceptions that threaten all they know.
Winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction, and the GrubStreet National Book Prize.
A featured Los Angels Times “Summer Book,” a Bustle “Best Book for July,” and one of Flavorwire’s “10 Must Read Books for July.”
“A genuinely fascinating novel—for its inventiveness, its passionate breadth and vision.” —Richard Ford
“Among the most gifted writers of his generation.” —Colum McCann
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Josh Weil. (2014). The Great Glass Sea: A Novel. Grove Atlantic.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Josh Weil. 2014. The Great Glass Sea: A Novel. Grove Atlantic.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Josh Weil, The Great Glass Sea: A Novel. Grove Atlantic, 2014.
MLA Citation (style guide)Josh Weil. The Great Glass Sea: A Novel. Grove Atlantic, 2014.
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- bioText: Josh Weil was the recipient of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction for his debut novella collection, The New Valley. He has been named a National Book Award "5 Under 35" author, a Fulbright scholar, and was a Jersey Fellow at Columbia University. His fiction has appeared in Granta, StoryQuarterly, and New England Review, among others. Weil divides his time between New York City and Southwestern Virginia.
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- A New York Times Editors’ Choice, this epic tale of brotherly love set in a dystopian alternate reality is filled with the magic of Russian folklore.
After their father’s death, twin brothers Yarik and Dima grew up together on their uncle’s farm, spending their days helping fishermen and their nights spellbound by their uncle’s stories. Years later, the two men labor at the Oranzheria, a sprawling glass greenhouse and a capitalist experiment that keeps the surrounding townspeople in perpetual daylight.
Work is now all the twins have in common. Stalwart Yarik is married with children, and oppressed by the burden of responsibility and the pressures of work, while dreamer Dima lives with his mother—and rooster—and spends his time planning the brothers’ return to their uncle’s land.
Then one day a bizarre encounter with the Oranzheria’s ruthless owner changes everything. Soon they find themselves at the center of strange conspiracies, disasters, and deceptions that threaten all they know.
Winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction, and the GrubStreet National Book Prize.
A featured Los Angels Times “Summer Book,” a Bustle “Best Book for July,” and one of Flavorwire’s “10 Must Read Books for July.”
“A genuinely fascinating novel—for its inventiveness, its passionate breadth and vision.” —Richard Ford
“Among the most gifted writers of his generation.” —Colum McCann
- reviews
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- source: New York Times Book Review
- content: “[A] fascinating debut novel... The Great Glass Sea is not an alternative history, ...but a fantastical vision inspired by bits and pieces of Russian language history, and culture. It is beautifully baffled by the mysterious Russian soul."
- premium: False
- source: James Scott, The Rumpus.com
- content: "Josh Weil's The Great Glass Sea is the most unexpected second book by a writer of note to appear in years....A grand fable...an absorbing and touching tale...Few young writers appreciate landscape, the way it shapes and diminishes people who live off it, quite like Weil...an engrossing story of brotherly division."
- premium: False
- source: John Freeman,Boston Globe
- content: "With his brilliant new novel, The Great Glass Sea, Weil maintains this balance beautifully over 474 pages, sweeping the reader along with careful characterization and exuberant language...the book has the heartbeat of a fable, and plays out in the rhythms of a story told for generations. The resultant feeling is that of being on someone's knee while hearing this magnificent tale."
- premium: False
- source: Malcolm Forbes, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune
- content: "Weil's highly original drama unfolds in a fittingly unique setting...The Great Glass Sea showcases a dystopian society on a grand scale. An ambitious and richly imagined debut novel."
- premium: False
- source: Jeff Vandermeer, Los Angeles Times
- content: “Moving and sensitive...evokes the mythic feel of a contemporary classic. There's pathos and tension...breathtaking brilliance. Weil's greatest gift to the reader: a deep understanding of family, personal loss and the abiding love between siblings."
- premium: False
- source: Kendal Weaver, Associated Press
- content: “Captivating. A kind of sweeping historical fable...superbly drawn."
- premium: False
- source: Yvonne Zipp, Christian Science Monitor
- content: "Weil conjures up image after image of great beauty and melancholy...some of them, like a lone figure skating atop the Oranzheria, have an indelible originality....The Great Glass Sea is a work of great ambition and imagination."
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- source: Bustle, July 2014's Best Books
- content: “Vivid prose and soaring imagination...an inventive dystopian tale from a brilliant storyteller about a not-so-far-fetched alternate present, a tale about family and brotherhood that simultaneously brings to light poignant political and philosophical inquiries. It's a stunningly imagined debut that will dazzle and mesmerize readers as they disappear into its visionary depths and resurface with a new and more profound understanding of fraternal love."
- premium: False
- source: Austin American Statesman
- content: "When Weil's prose and “Russian novel" connect with our contemporary anxieties about the future of labor and value, something magical happens."
- premium: False
- source: The Brooklyn Rail
- content: "An ambitious and accomplished debut novel, one that reshapes the world even as it reflects our own reality back to us, now more brightly lit than ever before."
- premium: False
- source: Fantasy Literature
- content: “Thoughtful, elegiac...Weil couches this complex tale in prose that is lyrical, funny, sad, and often echoes folk-tale language. An audacious SF what-if...it will make you think and wonder. Sometimes it will make you laugh, and by the end, it will reward you."
- premium: False
- source: Examiner
- content: “Evocative of Russian classics...an ambitious analysis of the fallout of that one single moment, how the drive to work and amass impacts our happiness, and conversely how listlessness or a lack of ambition do the same...The Great Glass Sea is a joy to reflect on...Josh Weil proves himself a storyteller with the ability to deliver the kind of complex literature (with room for interpretation that lends itself to discussion and debate) in a time where fast, easy and digestible are far more common place."
- premium: False
- source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
- content: "If complex literary novels really are done for, Josh Weil must've missed the text message. His formidable “The Great Glass Sea" knits together strands of traditional Slavic folklore and futuristic speculative fiction to create a passionate reflection on technology and personal happiness. Spanning almost 500 pages, the novel poses mind-bending questions about politics, ecology and the ambivalent closeness of siblings...Weil pulls off dazzling strokes of storytelling...His distinctive voice...
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May 26, 2014
Twin brothers find themselves on opposite sides of an ideological divide in this ambitious debut novel from the author of the novella collection The New Valley. Yarik and Dima grew up together in Russia, thick as thieves. As adults, they work at the Oranzheria, a massive greenhouse in the town of Petroplavilsk, which is bathed in perpetual daylight by space mirrors. Under the mirrors, the town becomes ceaselessly productive, a place where “sleep was freed from nature’s hours, breakfast was what happened before work,” and “stores never closed.” Longing for more time with his brother, Dima becomes increasingly disenchanted with this new, overly productive society, while an encounter between Yarik and Russian billionaire Boris Bazarov—the oligarch behind the Oranzheria—leads to the Yarik’s ascension through the ranks. A well-timed dystopian tale, the novel beautifully details both the politics of this hypothetical Russia—“oligarchs bred beneath the clamp of communism let loose upon loot-fueled dreams”—and its impact on one small family. Agent: P.J. Mark, Janklow & Nesbit.
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May 15, 2014
Twin brothers Yarik and Dima spent their childhood at their uncle's countryside farm, helping in the fields and listening to his folktales at night. Years later, the brothers are grown, living in the city of Petroplavilsk. Vast glass panels form a ceiling, the Oranzheria, over the city, and night is replaced by mirrors floating like satellites in the sky, reflecting light. Yarik has a wife and children and is determined to make a good life for them at any cost. Dima, the nostalgic dreamer, lives with their mother and a rooster in her apartment. When Dima quits his job, causing social and political upheaval, and Yarik encounters the billionaire oligarch who controls Petroplavilsk, irrevocable change enters their lives. VERDICT After winning several literary awards for a trio of novellas titled The New Valley, Weil creates a tale of longing and sadness, threaded by Russian folklore and heavy with the weight of love, in his first novel. Facing 400 pages, the reader will trudge through some redundant detailing but will be rewarded by a deep emotional bond with the characters and immersion in a landscape and story line full of natural beauty, resplendent and incandescent. [See Prepub Alert, 1/10/14.]--Shannon Greene, Greenville Technical Coll. Lib., SC
Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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July 1, 2014
In his debut novel, Weil, author of the award-winning collection The New Valley (2009), employs intriguing tropestwins, science fictionto tell a complex story of brotherly love and capitalism. Set in Russia, this is a folklore-drenched alternative history, and the glass sea of the title the book's finest conceit; it's actually a giant greenhouse illuminated by sheets of Kevlar. These space mirrors, rising each night, prevent night from ever falling on the company town of Petroplavisk, turning the White Nights of Russian summers into a perpetual nightmare. Inseparable from birth and products of a broken Soviet home, twin brothers Dima and Yarik idolize their uncle's farm, where they lived after their mother's institutionalization and their father's death. Like everyone else in the region, they take jobs on the glass sea. A chance encounter with the oligarch owner of everythingknown as the She Bear, he is a caricature and a narrative red herringchanges their lives irrevocably. The plot's romance element is pat, but Weil does a fantastic job of creating and detailing the novel's marvelously imagined world.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)
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Work is now all the twins have in common. Stalwart Yarik is married with children, and oppressed by the burden of responsibility and the pressures of work, while dreamer Dima lives with his mother—and rooster—and spends his time planning the brothers’ return to their uncle’s land.
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