What is Josh Weil reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Josh Weil, author of The Great Glass Sea.

His entry begins:

I’m reading some door stoppers these days. In particular, Anna Karenina. I’d never read it, and, since my novel is set in Russia, I figured I probably oughta crack the ol’ masterpiece open. And I’ve been happy to find the rest of the world’s not wrong: it is a masterpiece (of course). It’s also just hugely enjoyable, shot-through with such life, and simply humming with the complexities of human relationships. I’m loving it. Which isn’t as expected as it might seem. I’ve read a fair amount of classic Russian literature—Dead Souls, Crime and Punishment, Fathers and Sons…etc.—and I’m attracted to a lot about it, but I’m not someone who reveres the classics over contemporary fiction (I think the great writers today are doing work every bit as great as ones who came before) and I’ve often found myself losing patience with aspects of some of the classics that feel out-of-synch with what I love about reading my favorite literary writers today. I don’t feel that with Anna Karenina, though. It’s...[read on]

About The Great Glass Sea, from the publisher:

From celebrated storyteller Josh Weil comes an epic tragedy of brotherly love, a sui generis novel swathed in all the magic of Russian folklore and set against the dystopian backdrop of an all too real alternate present.

Twin brothers Yarik and Dima have been inseparable since childhood. Living on their uncle’s farm after the death of their father, the boys once spent their days helping farmers in collective fields, their nights spellbound by their uncle’s mythic tales. Years later, the two men labor side by side at the Oranzheria, a sea of glass—the largest greenhouse in the world—that sprawls over acres of cropland. Lit by space mirrors orbiting above, it ensnares the denizens of Petroplavilsk in perpetual daylight and constant productivity, leaving the twins with only work in common—stalwart Yarik married with children, oppressed by the burden of responsibility; dreamer Dima living alone with his mother and rooster, wistfully planning the brothers’ return to their uncle’s land.

But an encounter with the Oranzerhia’s billionaire owner changes their lives forever. Dima drifts into a laborless life of bare subsistence while Yarik begins a head-spinning ascent from promotion to promotion until both men become poster boys for opposing ideologies, pawns at the center of conspiracies and deceptions that threaten to destroy not only the lives of those they love but the very love that has bonded the brothers since birth. This is a breathtakingly ambitious novel of love, loss, and light, set amid a bold vision of an alternative present-day Russia.

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--Marshal Zeringue