Leningrad, 1986. When Stéphanie, a French student of Pushkin, falls in love with Sergei, a young Russian dissident, and enables him to leave the country in a marriage of convenience, she believes she is helping to outwit the KGB. But in the corrupt moral atmosphere of Gorbachev's Soviet Union, no one is entirely what they seem. Love and friendship are built on deception, betrayal is the norm, and lies are the accepted mode of communication. Stéphanie's 'chance' meeting with Sergei is actually the opening move in a skilfully-plotted attempt to entrap a woman who defected to France some twenty years earlier. No one escapes unscathed from the tragedy that follows.
ISBN: 1-84045-027-4
"A sweeping contemporary historical romance, set against the great drama of perestroika. The story is ... gripping and finally surprising; what, in other contexts, one would call a page-turner."
The Times Literary Supplement
"A wonderful book: part history, spy-novel, love story. I couldn't stop reading it on my flight from DC to Tampa."
dean_kagawa@hp.com |
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