The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko - by Scott Stambach (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko, Scott Stambach presents a hilarious, heart-wrenching, and powerful debut novel about an orphaned boy who finds love and hope in a Russian hospital after Chernobyl.

Seventeen-year-old Ivan Isaenko is a life-long resident of the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children in Belarus. Born deformed yet mentally keen with a frighteningly sharp wit, strong intellect, and a voracious appetite for books, Ivan is forced to interact with the world through the vivid prism of his mind. For the most part, every day is exactly the same for Ivan, which is why he turns everything into a game, manipulating people and events around him for his own amusement. That is, until a new resident named Polina arrives at the hospital. At first Ivan resents Polina. She steals his books. She challenges his routine. The nurses like her. She is exquisite. But soon he cannot help being drawn to her and the two forge a romance that is tenuous and beautiful and everything they never dared dream of. Before, he survived by being utterly detached from things and people. Now Ivan wants something more: Ivan wants Polina to live.

Review Quotes

The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko is comic and staggeringly tragic, often both in a single sentence... A grittier, Eastern European, more grown-up The Fault in Our Stars." -Eowyn Ivey, author of The Snow Child

"Ivan Isaenko is a beautiful, heartbreaking, and hilarious novel whose closest literary relative might be One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest... Will appeal to any reader with a beating heart--a true gem." -Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs

"The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko is told in the voice of Ivan...His imagination may help him survive. And, as audience, we can only read about his life and allow our hearts to break more than once." -Psychology Today

"Impressive... Stambach's surprising, empathetic novel takes on heavy themes of illness, suffering, religion, patience, and purpose, with a balanced mix of humor and heart."--Publishers Weekly

"An auspicious, gut-wrenching, wonderful debut." --Kirkus (starred review)

"The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko must be counted as a miracle of a book." -BookPage

"An extraordinarily brave and original debut. Ivan is an unforgettable narrator, and his story ripples with intelligence, humor, heartbreak, and humanity." -Carolina De Robertis, author of The Gods of Tango

"Only a writer with considerable heart and imagination could transform a hospital for post-Chernobyl fallout kids into a captivating, complex, nearly magical world. Scott Stambach has done exactly that. And in the character of Ivan Isaenko he has created an irresistible narrator, just what one would hope for in a seventeen-year-old raised on Nabokov and Dostoyevsky: by equal measures self-aware, hilarious, quick-witted, and profane. He is an original in every sense of the word, and his story is a marvelous one." -Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, National Book Award Finalist and author of Madeleine is Sleeping

"It would be an easy injustice to spackle Ivan Isaenko with a bunch of clichéd praise: hilarious, poignant, heart-warming, heart-wrenching. While these are true, Ivan is so much more. It's an enchantingly acerbic and endearingly charming story about love, hope and humanity in the face of death; truly a tender and thoughtful reflection on our universal malady." -Bradley Somer, author of Fishbowl

"The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko is comic and staggeringly tragic, often both in a single sentence...Ivan Isaenko is one of the most surprising narrators I have encountered--witty, adolescent, well-read, at times quite vulgar, and confined to a life that seems nearly unlivable, until he discovers that even at Mazyr Hospital, love is possible. A grittier, Eastern European, more grown-up The Fault in Our Stars." -Eowyn Ivey, author of The Snow Child

About the Author

Scott Stambach lives in San Diego, where he teaches physics and astronomy. He also collaborates with Science for Monks, a group of educators and monastics working to establish science programs in Tibetan Buddhist Monasteries throughout India. He has written about his experiences working with the monks of Sera Je College monastery and has published short fiction in several literary journals, including Eclectica, Stirring, and Convergence.