ABOUT
THE BOOK

In Soviet Russia the desire for freedom is also a desire for the freedom to love. Lovers live as outlaws, traitors to the collective spirit, and love is more intense when it feels like an act of resistance.

Now entering middle age, an orphan recalls the fleeting moments that have never left him – a scorching day in a blossoming orchard with a woman who loves another; a furtive, desperate affair in a Black Sea resort; the bunch of snowdrops a crippled childhood friend gave him to give to his lover.

As the dreary Brezhnev era gives way to Perestroika and the fall of Communism, the orphan uncovers the truth behind the life of Dmitri Ress, whose tragic fate embodies the unbreakable bond between love and freedom.

Judges’ Comments

A grand narrative by Russian-born Makine, of Soviet Russian life and loves surviving under the intolerable burdens of state supervision, horrible intolerance, and conveniently mongered public lies. Whole spans of Soviet history finely refracted through the jotted-in life of dissident poet Dmitri Ress. A powerfully angry piece of modern historiography compressed in a fine series of memories and encounters. Magically miniaturist story-telling done in exquisitely pointilliste prose. Always touchingly insistent on how love and humanity and poetry get to survive in a terribly cold political climate.