Praise forLove Like Water Love Like Fire

What distinguishes Iossel as a writer aside from his obvious talent for atmospheric dramedy is his lucid musical prose style Iossels marvelous sense of rhythm dazzles the reader We cant stop turning the pages of this book New York Times Book Review

The former USSR continues to cast a long shadow on our current affairs but Mikhail Iossel brings a fresh eye to the region Engaging equally with the absurdity and brutality of life in a repressive regime Love Like Water Love Like Fire is perfect for fans of Gogol and George Saunders alike Chicago Review of Book

Very funny InLove like Water Love like Firejokes point to the absurdities and logical contradictions in everyday life There is something refreshing about Iossels willingness to maintain his sense of irony even about such intractable subjects as antiSemitism the ghastliness of Soviet bureaucracy or the irreconcilability of death with human happiness Literary Review of Canada

Iossel is an exception among the writers of his generation Full of subtle irony and macabre humor his prose makes such skillful use of American colloquialism that it is as though these stories take place in some fictional SovietAmerica TLS

Iossels lens is honest and compassionate If theres one takeaway fromLove Like Water Love Like Fireits that this compassion may be necessary today more than ever Winnipeg Free Press

Brilliant Iossel has created a style that is as intriguing and richly suggestive as that of his predecessor Vladimir Nabokov Canberra Times

An expertly written set of stories often brimming with dark humor offering many vantage points from which to consider the Soviet experience and the particular burdens it placed on Jews J The Jewish News of Northern California

Iossel brings his warm gently ironic authorial voice to bear on the cruel and often surreal lives of Jews in the Soviet Union There is love like fire and there is love like water say the Hasidic masters and Iossels collection explores that dichotomy Jewish Book Council

A vibrant collection With an ear for the clumsiness of Russian bureaucratic nomenclature an eye for Kafkaesque humiliations and a heart that embraces all the paradoxes of being a Soviet Jew Iossel casts a spell over the reader Reading like Sholem Aleichem updated by Bruce Jay Friedman these stories reflect the exciting evolution of Russian Jewish literature Publishers Weekly

An engaging collection While many stories illuminate the absurdity of Soviet society Iossel conveys the brutal oppression of the surveillance state most intensely and hauntingly in the title story Kirkus Reviews

Harrowing hilarious dark and devastating Iossels sentences twist the reader through the illogical forces of dictatorship childhood puberty survival and writing angsty poetry in a communist regime Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize jury citation