The Free World

"The Free World takes place in the near past — 1978 — and chronicles the adventures of the Krasnanskys, a family of Russian Jews, at a critical moment in their history.  The family, a three-generational collective, has decided to take advantage of a minor loophole in Soviet emigration policy (extended initially, to Russian Jews, in favour of family reunification in Israel) to relocate to the West.  Although, because of family connections, they had originally hoped to end up in Chicago, various complications dictate that Canada will eventually become their new home.  Their odyssey, which began in their hometown of Riga, Latvia, takes them first to Vienna, and then to Rome, the point of departure to the West.  The story unfolds over the five months prior to their arrival in Canada, during which the family’s destiny hangs in limbo, ensnared in bureaucracy, temporarily suspended between the old and the new."

"Contained within the Krasnasky family unit, in varying degrees of shifting equilibrium, are many of the emotional conflicts inherent in the process of emigration. The need of the younger generation (brothers Karl and Alec, and their wives Rosa and Polina, respectively) for hope and opportunity is offset by the pain of irrevocable loss of connection, community and place, the dissolution of blood ties, and, for the patriarch Samuil, the abandonment of cherished ideals for which much has been sacrificed."

Excerpted from:http://kerryoncanlit.wordpress.com/recent-reviews/bezmozgis-david-the-free-world/