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Books

The Great Gatsby meets Fifty Shades of Oligarch

Vesna Goldsworthy’s novel about Moscow-on-Thames is a tense, witty page-turner, says Viv Groskop

18 April 2015

9:00 AM

18 April 2015

9:00 AM

Gorsky Vesna Goldsworthy

Chatto, pp.277, £12.99, ISBN: 9781784740092

It’s surprising there haven’t been more novels drawing on London’s fascination with Russian oligarchs. But how to write about them without it all seeming a bit Jackie Collins? Vesna Goldsworthy has hit on the perfect solution with her witty novel Gorsky. If you’re going to write about being nouveau riche, why not model your book on the classiest thing ever written on the subject, The Great Gatsby?

Gorsky doesn’t advertise on the cover that this is a thinly veiled rewriting but it’s obvious from the first page (and explained at length in the acknowledgments).

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