Bury Me behind the Baseboard

Bury Me Behind the Baseboard has been a major bestseller in Russia, staying at the top of the charts for a decade and receiving high acclaim from literary critics and ordinary readers alike. This hilarious book sold over a million copies in Russia and acquires new fans every month. The story of an eight-year-old boy and his grandmother is often described as one of the funniest ever written, on par with Forrest Gump or The Confederacy of Dunces. At the same time, the dramatic tone of some of the passages evokes the writings of Dickens and Dostoyevsky. A winning combination of humor and drama explains the novel€s tremendous success in Russia. Translations of Sanaev€s Bury Me Behind the Baseboard have been published in Germany, Italy, France, Poland, Israel, China, Taiwan, and other countries.

Nominated by German author Alina Bronsky, the novel won the first place in the informal readers€ poll, 25 Books That Inspired the World (1989-2014), that featured in the November 2014 issue of World Literature Today.

"An autobiographical story about family, love, madness, violence, and trauma€"told from the view of an eight-year-old boy€"it shook Russia to the core as a surprising portrait of a generation, unveiling the madness of family structures familiar to everybody. Touchingly na¯ve, tragic, and incredibly funny at the same time."
Alina Bronsky