1
of
1
Jacob's Ladder
A Novel
Ratings/reviews counts are updated frequently.
Check link for latest rating. ( 2,593 ratings, 231 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still
learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Summary
Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$3799
Unit price
/
Unavailable
International Supplier
This title is in-stock with overseas suppliers. While it is not available locally, we fly books in weekly from the US and UK to our Auckland warehouse for immediate dispatch.
AVAILABLE WITH SUPPLIER
Ships from our Auckland warehouse within 4-6 weeks
Found a better price? Request a price match
Jacob's Ladder
$3799
Unit price
/
Unavailable
Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
Ideal for readers who appreciate epic family sagas, Russian literature, and historical fiction with deep exploration of personal and political legacies.
Latest News
New Releases to add to your TBR this week (2nd September)
There's so much new this week to get excited about with so many amazing new...
Screen Time for Tamariki - the books you need!
Finding the task of navigating screen time and the digital world for children incredibly complex,...
Shirl's Road Trip Reads and Board Game Picks
I recently spent a couple of weeks road-tripping with whΔnau visiting Aotearoa from overseas showing...
The Story to Screen Report - 01/09/2026
Sacha has rounded up all the biggest Story to Screen news from the past week,...
The Book Briefing - September 1st
Welcome to this week's Book Briefing where we round up the news for the week!...
See moreThe modern Tolstoy presents a family saga spanning a century of Russian history.
The modern Tolstoy presents a family saga spanning a century of Russian history.
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Description
One of Russia's most renowned literary figures and a Man Booker International Prize nominee, Ludmila Ulitskaya presents what may be her final novel. Jacob's Ladder is a family saga spanning a century of recent Russian history and represents the summation of the author's career, which has been devoted to sharing the absurd and tragic tales of twentieth-century life in her nation.
Spanning the seeming promise of the prerevolutionary years, to the dark Stalinist era, to the corruption and confusion of the present day, Jacob's Ladder is a pageant of romance, betrayal, and memory. With a scale worthy of Tolstoy, it asks how much control any of us have over our livesβand how much is in fact determined by history, by chance, or indeed by the genes passed down by the generations that have preceded us into the world.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Publishers Weekly praises the novel as a "mesmerizing" and "challenging yet rewarding epic" that highlights humanity's limited control over life amidst political turmoil and mortality. Booklist highlights the story's focus on generational patterns uncovered through family correspondence, recommending it to fans of Russian literature and epic narratives.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781250619563
Publisher: St Martin's Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 22 September 2020
Country: United States
Imprint: Picador USA
Illustration: Includes one family tree
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 40.0mm
Width: 141.0mm
Height: 221.0mm
Weight: 643g
Pages: 560
Collections
About the Author
Ludmila Ulitskaya is one of Russia's most popular and renowned literary figures. A former scientist and the director of Moscow's Hebrew Repertory Theater, she is the author of more than a dozen works of fiction, including The Big Green Tent; several tales for children; and multiple plays that have been staged by a number of theaters in Russia and Germany. She has won Russia's Man Booker Prize and twice won its Big Book Prize, and has been nominated for the Man Booker International Prize. Polly Gannon is the director of cultural studies at the New York-St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistics, Cognition and Culture. She holds a PhD in Russian literature from Cornell University. She lives, teaches, and translates in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Also by Ludmila Ulitskaya
View all-
The Body of the Soul
The Body of the Soul is a new collection of stories by the acclaimed Ludmila Ulitskaya, masterfully translated into English. While we can feel, know, and study the body, the soul refuses definition. Where does it begin and end? What does the soul have to do with love? Does it exist at all, and if so, does it outlast the...Paperback$3599Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Just the Plague
Just the Plague by Ludmila Ulitskaya tells the story of Rudolf Maier, a young microbiologist who is working on a plague vaccine. Summoned to Moscow to deliver a progress report to his superiors, he inadvertently carries the virus with him from the lab. Upon the discovery of his illness, the state machinery responds with terrifying efficiency, rounding up dozens of...Paperback$2300Elsewhere:$2499Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks
More from Crime & Thriller
View all-
New ReleaseDying Days
Award-winning writer delivers a pulse-pounding espionage thriller. Missing soldiers, MI6 secrets and European partisans collide in a deadly game where the lines between lies and reality are fast disintegrating. In the dying days of the Second World War, a new conflict is about to ignite. May, 1945: After fighting to liberate Europe from the Nazis, Tito's Yugoslav Army and Allied...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3699Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Buy to WinNew ReleaseThe Country Road Murders
From the Sunday Times bestselling author comes a pulse-pounding thriller about justice, vengeance and the roads that lead us home. No one gets this big without amazing natural storytelling talent - which is what Jim has, in spades β LEE CHILD Cross Rivers is the kind of small town where everyone knows your name β and your secrets. Silas Tucker...Paperback$3000Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseEvery Lake
Scary stories are fun... until your life becomes one. When Alice was fifteen, her father killed Mia Heywood in their lakefront cottage before vanishing into the trees. At least that's what the locals think happened. Over a decade later, Alice has lost her job as a journalist, she's going through an expensive divorce and she desperately needs to sell the...Paperback$3299Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New Release
Nautilus
The follow-up to the bestselling novel The Turing Protocol. Nautilus is a machine with the astonishing power to send messages eight weeks back in time. Its users must follow a set of protocols established by its inventor, Alan Turing, including that it can only be used by a descendant of his family, and only to avert global disasters. But what...Paperback$2999Elsewhere:$3699Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New Release
Cold River
The sensational new novel from the author of the bestselling thriller, The Creeper, winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction 2025. Deep in the mountains, secrets grow deadly... Detective Constable Sally White knows how easily hikers can go missing in Victoria's high country. But there's something about the disappearance of Louis Taylor, a young man lost up...Paperback$3000Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Buy to WinNew ReleaseIt Could Have Been Her
PREPARE TO BE HOOKED: The no. 1Β Sunday TimesΒ and MULTI-million-copy bestselling author is back with a brand-new spine tingling thriller. It was the night she almost died. Jane Trevally, newly divorced and feeling a little lost, agrees to accompany a man she doesn't know to his house in the darkest corner of Hampstead Heath. She's offered a drink, goes in, and...Paperback$3000Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Buy to Win26 Beauties
The twenty-sixth thrilling novel in the globally bestselling Women's Murder Club series. Beautiful young women are disappearing by the dozen. A celebration is cut short when a concerned father crashes Detective Inspector Lindsay Boxer's party. His daughter is missing - and she's not the only one. DI Lindsay Boxer has been tracking a chilling pattern: a Jane Doe washed ashore,...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New Release
The Secrets We Hide
The stunning new North Falls thriller by the bestselling author ofΒ We Are All Guilty Here 'Quite simply, Karin Slaughter is the best of us' Dervla McTiernan Welcome back to North Falls -- a small town with big secrets. The house at 1601 Iris Drive looks like any other in the quiet, residential street. But rumours are rife about the Vickery...Paperback$3099Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Buy to WinThe Parkwood Murders
They came for an escape, but can they escape a killer? Detective Nicola Bridge returns in another gripping and immersive mystery For its loyal guests, Parkwood Holiday Village in west Dorset is a haven- woodland walks, a tranquil lake, service around the clock. Until, just after midsummer, a body is found floating in the swimming pool. Detective Nicola Bridge, exhausted...Paperback$3000Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableBackorderShips mid September -
13% offHope Rises
'BALDACCI IS STILL PEERLESS' - THE SUNDAY TIMES REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD . . . Walter Nash, working under the alias of Dillon Hope, is on the road to revenge after becoming an informant for the FBI against a global criminal operation headed up by Victoria Steers. Steers has ripped everything Nash held dear away from him....Paperback$2700Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Slash
A year after a brutal shootout left her lover dead, ex-police sergeant Honey Chalmers is a hot mess, drinking too much and eating too little, working casual gigs for a shady firm of private investigators β while holding conversations with a ghost. A desperate father asks her to investigate his missing son β a double-murder suspect last seen during the...Paperback$3200Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
A River Red With Blood
The players call it the Game, and its aim is simple: to abduct and kill a stranger without getting caught. They're very good at it. They've been playing it for a long time. And they can keep playing as long as everyone sticks to the rules: No Killing Close to Home and No Killing Outside the Game. But those rules...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today
Why buy from us?
Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!
Service & Delivery
Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.
Auckland Bookstore
We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.
Our Gifting Service
Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.
Crime & Thriller lists from the team
Explore our curated lists from our heroes to find your next read!
