The Hermit is a novel take on the old question: what does it take to exit the rat race? The plot follows the daily routine of Andy Sylvain, an aging Manhattan bond trader who grows disenchanted with his professional and personal life, and begins to wonder whether the escape from it all is even possible or desirable. He’s a Master of the Universe who would like to be known for something other than his professional acumen, and whose thoughts and inner rationales betray a lost and confused man who can not even describe what ails him, much less cure it. Written in a breezy style, the novel’s levity is deceiving: underneath the descriptions of the glitz, the parties, and the intricacies of the trading floor culture, there’s a layered meditation on the fragility and the unresolvable conflicts of our rational, technocratic world.

"A Tom Wolfe for the Instagram age! Katerina Grishakova writes with the assurance of a seasoned novelist even as her pages sing out with the exuberance of a newcomer. The Hermit is a stylish, sophisticated story of how internal turmoil can ravage the soul even as external success can nourish the ego. Ruthless, funny, and dazzlingly sharp-eyed on the details, Grishakova is a thrilling new voice."

— Meghan Daum, author of The Problem With Everything

“This is an extraordinary book, rich in observation and keenly attuned to the inner world of its spiritually impoverished protagonist. The mosaic-like accumulation of physical detail—much attention is paid to food, houses, shoes, and clothes—and the author’s deep understanding of and affection for her wryly comic but wholly credible cast of eccentrics cohere over time into a portrait of a troubled psyche that doubles as an indictment of a troubled nation, one consumed with technology and profits, plagued by demagogues and charlatans, and driving at full speed towards something dark. The final fifty pages—an extended sequence that is at once ominous, dream-like, and achingly sad—is some of the finest writing of the year, calling to mind the films of Martin McDonagh and the Coen Brothers. At once cerebral and melancholy, nimbly balancing metaphysics and the mundane, this is a book to be savored. It is an impressive achievement.”

US Review of Books

“For readers drawn to the question of whether American high finance leaves room for anything besides wealth accumulation, or anyone concerned about dutifully checking off society's boxes while plagued by inner discontent, delving into the world of Andy Sylvain may hit close to home. The other line-drawn characters pop and recede, essentially serving as archetypes when the narrative requires. The readers know these people in a tangential way, and Grishakova breathes life into them only as needed—so Andy is the only person here with much depth.

Seeing his elaborate life unravel makes for a sobering statement on mortality and what constitutes a purposeful existence. Grishakova presents searching philosophical questions around these universal themes without losing sight of the humanity within. It sometimes seems uncertain of its aims and struggles to connect the dots sufficiently at the end, but this novel nevertheless brings out the drama and tension in the moral and economic quagmire that is living as a Wall Street financial insider.

IR Verdict: In THE HERMIT, Katerina Grishakova crafts a compelling character study of one man's midlife journey to rediscover purpose and meaning beyond his outwardly successful but soulless career on Wall Street.”

IndieReader (4/5 stars)

Q: How is this novel different from other Wall Street books?

A: Most of the books about Wall Street aim to glorify its subjects. They’re written in a peculiar ‘behold our depravity, and despair’ style. I always got the feeling that the authors chase easy, surface sensationalism rather than try to ponder on the deeper source of their subjects’ sociopathy. And, perhaps, such approach is intentional: that’s what sells. But neither the Wolf of Wall Street, nor The Big Short, nor Liar’s Poker are interested in what’s behind a finance bro’s public face. (Not to mention that the Wolf of Wall Street never even worked on Wall Street.) Those books give us juicy bits of behind the scenes shenanigans, they dazzle us with depravity, but leave us in the dark as to the origin of those shenanigans. We’re left with the idea that those people are driven by greed, but there’s more to their behavior than greed. There’s some lack of fulfillment, some emptiness, some deeper discontent. That discontent is the focus of The Hermit.

Q: Who is Andy Sylvain, your main character?

A: Andy Sylvain is a middle-aged bond trader, a Master of the Universe, to use Tom Wolfe’s famous designation. He lives a comfortable life: a mansion in Westchester, a pied-a-terre in Manhattan, a younger girlfriend, and enough money to not have to work anymore. In his spare time he and the members of his financial community attend silly but lavish costume parties at prime Manhattan locations, which is where we first meet him. And yet something weighs on him, some unexplained dissatisfaction the source of which he can’t define. He begins to see the spiritual emptiness of his occupation, but is lost as to what could be done about it, or whether anything should be done at all.

Q: What inspired you to write this novel and do you have any literary influences that guide your book?

A: The question of why high-paid professionals with enough money to retire and enjoy life almost never do it gnawed me for a long time. I find this topic quite fascinating and also not sufficiently explored in modern literature and in a broader pop culture. I observed such men over time –– I spent more than a decade on Wall Street –– and I’ve concluded that the reason is not money per se, but a kind of built-in inertia, the fear of stopping, of being rendered irrelevant by their social circles. To try to describe this phenomenon I had to reach to earlier classics for inspiration and for style. Moby Dick is referenced in the first chapter, although Bartleby the Scrivener would be even more relevant to the main theme. I’d also name Joseph Conrad whose riveting storytelling I was trying to imitate, and Vladimir Nabokov, whose works I studied for ideas on style and details, like description of social gatherings, or characters’ personal traits, gestures, and facial expressions. And deep in the background, like an all-seeing eye, looms Dostoyevsky, one of the best scholars of human folly.

Q: There are a lot of dualities, the opposite notions at play in this novel: the city and the woods; power and helplessness; reason and irrationality. Is there a takeaway from this tug-of-war?

A: I’m not a determinist. I subscribe to the idea that the uncertainty is an inherent feature of our world. Opposite notions can exist in one person. There’s no algorithm that can predict a person’s behavior. One can be a Master of the Universe and be unable to make a decision. One can be a math genius and go live in the woods, like Alexander Grothendieck. This irrationality, unpredictability is what makes us different from a code, from AI, it’s what gives us our humanity.

As for a takeaway, I think a good fiction is not supposed to give definitive answers. It’s supposed to describe a phenomenon, a problem with all its nuances and contradictions, and let the reader ponder on it. I hope that’s what this novel did.