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Unlike other authors who are eager to venture into new territory with each work, Bezmozgis feels that he has yet to finish exploring and interpreting the Jewish Soviet émigré story. “I think there’s a lot to be said about that experience,” he tells The Report, as he explains the pull he feels toward writing about what he knows and feels most emotionally connected to.5f:{"position":2,"content":"$60"} 61:{"position":3,"content":"“The first book, ‘Natasha,’ talks about what it’s like to arrive in a new country, what it’s like to arrive in North America and the experience of Soviet émigrés – Jewish émigrés – which I hadn’t seen anybody write about… I was fascinated by the story and it meant a lot to me. And there was a whole other part of that story, which preceded it, which I couldn’t really address in ‘Natasha,’ but I wanted to. So that is the reason for ‘The Free World.’ I see the two books as complementing each other, as together telling the story of that experience – backwards, I guess, because ‘Natasha’ came first.”"} 62:{"position":4,"content":"“Natasha,” winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award, the City of Toronto Book Award, the Commonwealth First Book Prize, the Reform Judaism Prize for Jewish Fiction, the JQ Wingate Prize, and shortlisted for many others, is a collection of interrelated stories about young Mark Berman, his parents and extended family, who fled Brezhnev-era Riga for Toronto. They chronicle Mark’s development from a little boy to a young man, and his family’s progress from a stressful, confusing and financially-strapped arrival in Canada

The Soviet Emigré Experience

Author David Bezmozgis emphasizes the Jewish in the Soviet-Jewish equation.