A tight, captivating story of a naive child's encounters with a Soviet
dictator, the 20th novel by Robert Littell
Leon Rozental--ten and a half, intellectually precocious, and possessing
a disarming candor--is suddenly alone after the death of his nuclear
physicist father and the arrest of his mother during the Stalinist purge
of Jewish doctors. Now on his own and hiding from the NKVD in the secret
rooms of the House on the Embankment, the massive building in Moscow
where many Soviet officials and apparatchiks live and work, Leon starts
to explore. One day, after following a passageway, Leon meets Koba, an
old man whose apartment is protected by several guards. Koba is a
high-ranking Soviet official with troubling insight into the thoughts
and machinations of Comrade Stalin.
In this taut and layered novel, New York Times bestselling author
Robert Littell deploys his deep knowledge of this complex period in
Russian history and masterful talent for captivating storytelling to
create a nuanced portrayal of the Soviet dictator, showing Stalin's
human side and his simultaneous total disregard for and ignorance of the
suffering he inflicted on the Russian people. The charm and spontaneity
of young Leon make him an irresistible narrator--and not unlike Holden
Caulfield, whom he admits to identifying with--caught in the spider's
web of the story woven by this enigmatic old man.
