The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street

'History doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes.'

One day in 1988, an enigmatic priest knocks on Pieter Waterdrinker's door with an unusual request—will he smuggle seven thousand bibles into the Soviet Union? Pieter agrees and soon finds himself living in the midst of one of the biggest social and cultural revolutions of our time, working as a tour operator with a sideline in contraband.

Thirty years later, from his apartment on Tchaikovsky Street in Saint Petersburg, where he lives with his Russian wife and three cats, Pieter reflects on his personal history in the Soviet Union, as well as the century of revolutions that took place in and around his street. A master storyteller, he blends history with memoir to create an ode to the divided soul of Russia and an unputdownable account of his own struggles with life, literature, and love.

The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street 's recreations of revolutionary Russia are vivid (including his hatred of the Tsar, Lenin, and Stalin) as is the daily reality of living in glasnost Russia. There are some positively Dostoevskian characters, and his portrait of Russia caught at twin moments of upheaval (1917, 1988) is an epic tale told with deceptive simplicity.'
—Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen, The Sydney Morning Herald

'Waterdrinker's gift for savage comedy and his war correspondent's eye have few contemporary equivalents.'
—Simon Ings, The Times

'Engrossing ... grips you and doesn't let go.'
—Matthew Janney, The Spectator