The Terrible

From the celebrated author of Little Lazarus, Michael Bible’s The Terrible moves between one man’s imagined memories of a past life as Ivan the Terrible’s brother, and his more recent recollections as a father careening through modern American society.

The Terrible unfolds in the space between confession and delusion as our narrator, the self-proclaimed brother of Ivan the Terrible, Yuri Vasilievich, is arrested and questioned for an unnamed “incident” in the parking lot of Twisted Oak Steakhouse in Harmony, North Carolina. Rather than explain what happened, he offers a meandering, occasionally mythic, and often hilarious account of his life. He claims to have been born in 1532 in Russia and is the younger brother of the Russian Tzar. He recounts frozen bear attacks, boyars ripped apart by dogs, a lifelong obsession with dandies and silks, and then pivots to modern day to his assault of a Captain America impersonator in Times Square.

Throughout the novel, the Russian past and the American present blur. Our narrator’s mental health deteriorates, or perhaps sharpens. But the emotional truth of his stories—his longing for love, his guilt as a parent, his isolation inside his own mind—cuts through even his most absurd digressions.