The book
Lost Generation
A Memoir of Addiction, Prison, and the Long Road Home
A generation searching for home while standing inside it.
Sergei Šarašenidze was born in Narva, on the edge of Estonia, to a Georgian father and a Russian-speaking mother. When the Soviet Union disappeared, the family did not move. The country moved around them. He became a boy with an Alien's Passport — not a citizen, not a foreigner. Something in between.
At fourteen he entered Maardu prison. Isolation. Winter. The year 2000. The first time. Not the last. What followed was a life lived across Saint Petersburg, Amsterdam, Lima, Cannes, Varna, and Sanok — addiction, sentences, love, and the slower work of coming home.
This is a true memoir. It is not a victory lap. It is a record of what a generation lost when the old maps disappeared, and of one man who is finally on his way.
What it is about
- An Alien's Passport, and a childhood between two worlds
- Juvenile prison at fourteen — Maardu, then Viljandi
- A documentary, Peegeldus, and a voice behind the wall
- Addiction as borrowed peace that always collects interest
- A life of borders: France, Peru, Bulgaria, Poland, Finland
- The search for home, and the people who kept it open
Who it is for
Anyone who has been a foreigner without moving
For people who woke up in the same apartment, in a different country, holding a passport that could not answer who they were.
Readers in recovery
A first-person account of heroin, collapse, and the silence that is not peace. No TED-talk ending.
Families who waited
For a mother who never left, a sister who kept a place, and anyone who has stood in the other room.
Book clubs
Fifty chapters and a letter to a dead father. Questions about belonging, pain, and what home is allowed to mean.
- Author
- Sergei Šarašenidze
- Length
- 287 pages
- Published
- August 1, 2026
- Format
- Kindle & paperback
- List price
- $7.99
- ASIN
- B0HCJCSQDL
Prefer to sample the voice first? Read from the memoir.