New York Times–Bestselling Author: After the USSR’s fall, a Russian academic is let loose in small-town America: “Rich and consistently surprising comedy.” —Publishers Weekly
 
Lemuel Falk, a Russian theoretical chaoticist on the lam from terrestrial chaos, has been applying for permission to leave Russia every year for the past twenty-three years. Because he knows state secrets, he hasn’t been allowed to cross the border. Now, suddenly, his request for an exit visa is approved—a sure sign that the situation is even more chaotic than he’d imagined.
 
Falk accepts a chair as a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Chaos-Related Studies in upstate New York. Arriving in the Promised Land under the impression that the streets are paved with Sony Walkmans, he plunges into the heart of another kind of chaos. No sooner has he arrived than he sets off on an academic cat fight, falls in love with a hairdresser half his age, gets mixed up with multiple intelligence agencies, and becomes a self-styled gumshoe tracking a serial killer…
 
“Littell’s fast-paced satire is by turns bawdy, cerebral and touching.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“Quirky characters and linguistic byplay insure the book’s appeal to sophisticated readers.” —Library Journal
 
“One of the most talented, most original voices in American fiction today.” —The Washington Post