Video: David Bezmozgis reads from The Free World

In this video Canadian writer and filmmaker David Bezmozgis reads an excerpt from The Free World. The novel tells the story of the Krasnansky family: three generations of Russian Jews who flee Soviet Latvia and head for Rome, where the family must spend six months waiting to secure visas to North America. In ironic contrast to the book’s title, the Italian capital is a threshold where the boundaries of freedom are still denied for the family.

For Bezmozgis, who was born in Riga, Latvia and moved to Canada with his family when he was six years old, the human and historical facets of the immigrant experience are an important topic. The theme of Soviet immigrants living in the free world, was also central to the author’s highly acclaimed book of short fiction, Natasha and Other Stories (2004).

On May 3, David Bezmozgis visited Pittsburgh to give a reading with Kyung-Sook Shin from South Korea and Hervé Le Tellier. The event was sponsored by City of Aslyum/Pittsburgh in partnership with PEN/America.

Read Sampsonia Way’s interview with David Bezmozgis.

Read an excerpt of The Free World