Better Than Ever: Russian edition

Better than Ever is an existential ride of a lifetime; or rather, Ezra’s lifetime. In a rich tapestry of stories within stories, Ezra leads the reader through his childhood and youth in Zhmerinka in the 1960s and 70s and up to his mid-life crisis in a city cafe. Ezra is writing a book because, as he says, ‘If I don’t say anything about them, then it will be as if they’d never existed.’ To the sound of Edith Piaf singing in the background, the lure of the past meets the street philosophy of the Russian Jew and the lives of characters such as Henda the professional chicken bidder, Meir the local idiot and the three friends, Ezra, Gans and Moyshe, are pitted against the art of Dali and Soutine and the psychology of Freud. And throughout, Ezra struggles to remember the name of the beautiful redhead who haunts his past – only to realize, right at the very end, that he knew her all along. Poignant, funny, cruel and surreal, Better than Ever captures the confusion of life in all its existential, lyrical glory.