"This novel–which is ostensibly about music–digs deep into the role the Ukrainian and Russian languages play in people's lives and through language manifests the visceral connection between these sibling cultures." —Marian SchwartzFrom the author of the international bestseller, Laurus, comes a richly layered, universal coming-of-age story in which a musical prodigy robbed of his talent by an incurable disease attempts to overcome his mortality. Through well-wrought vignettes and dialogue in the original Ukrainian, Vodolazkin shows us the ways in which these identities are inextricably linked and expressed through the push and pull of loyalties big and small.After Gleb Yanovsky, a celebrated guitarist, is diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at age fifty, he permits a writer, Sergei Nesterov, to pen his biography. For years, they meet regularly as Gleb recounts the life he's lived thus far: a...

A groundbreaking and gripping literary detective novel set in Soviet-era Russia Solovyov, a young scholar born into obscurity, arrives St. Petersburg to have his thesis topic handed to him: the story of General Larionov. Dismissive at first, his subject soon intrigues the young scholar, even obsesses him: this is no ordinary general. Not only did Larionov fight for the monarchist Whites during the civil war but he did so with bloody distinction. So how did he manage to live unharmed in the Soviet Union, on a Soviet pension, cutting an imposing figure on the Yalta beaches, leaving behind a son and a volume of memoirs? The budding young historian sets off to Crimea to look for some lost pages from the general's diary and on his journey discovers many surprises, not least the charming Zoya, who works at Yalta's Chekhov Museum. With wry humor, philosophical seriousness, and a unique narrative style, Solovyov and Larionov is a genre-defying historical detective novel that explores a fascinating period of Russian history. **