“The stories in this impressive collection beautifully express the enrichment and estrangement of displaced lives. With a single phrase or tiny detail, Grabbe accurately captures an entire soul and the fractured, complicated state of living between worlds. A bold and engrossing debut with unforgettable characters.”
— Marjan Kamali, author of The Stationery and The Lion Women of Tehran
“The Nansen Factor weaves a tapestry of lives uprooted and reshaped by the tides of history. From the stirring upheaval of the Bolshevik Revolution to the haunting memories of Paris and beyond, these interconnected stories traverse a century of exile, loss, and resilience. Each tale is a testament to the spirit of those who must forge new paths from the fragments of the past.”
— Sana Krasikov, author of One More Year and The Patriots
“Spanning the globe from St. Petersburg to Shanghai, Grabbe’s stunning debut charts the interconnected lives of unmoored Russians and their descendants. The Nansen Factor dramatizes a century of love, loss, longing, brutality, and determination as experienced by a sweeping cast of characters, from poor migrants to aspiring actors to modern-day Americans haunted by the past. This is a riveting and essential collection.”
— Chip Creek, author of Cape May
“The Nansen Factor opens us to the multitude of ways immigration trauma emerges in new generations. These are poignant stories of the opportunity and hardship of reclaiming lives in a new land. The fallacy of forgetting and the management of grief is a human predicament, and these moving stories are a testament to this shared humanity. Such an important message for our times!”
— Laurel M. Silber, Psy. D.
"These poignant and beautifully crafted tales bring a human touch to the bittersweet experience of exile."
— Anatol Shmelev, Ph.D., Robert Conquest Curator for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
“Gorgeous prose, delicate storytelling that tugs at the reader’s heartstrings. The entire generation of White Russia, the first wave of Russian emigration, comes alive. This book gives personal scale to the vastness of their displacement around the globe. Engrossing, timely and empathetic towards the victims of political upheaval.”
— Yelena Lembersky, author of Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour
“The Nansen Factor is a spellbinding exploration of migration and exile, and the aftershocks that ripple through generations. Alexandra Grabbe animates the impact of history’s vast movements on individual lives in these insightful, elegant, and moving stories. This is a wonderful collection.”
— Laura van den Berg, author of State of Paradise, Find Me, and Hold a Wolf by the Ears
“From this stunning kaleidoscope of individual tales emerges an expansive and affecting depiction of the dislocation, grief, nostalgia, and resilience that characterize the generation of White Russians displaced by the Bolshevik Revolution—and that reverberate in their descendants to this day. At once a lament and a salute to this phenomenon, The Nansen Factor introduces an extraordinary variety of characters with descriptions that are as lush as they are precise.”
— Sarah C. Baldwin, Writer
