by Martin Booth
First published 2000
Alexander Bayliss celebrates his eightieth birthday in a Russian village where he has lived for decades. The British citizen was arrested for espionage in the early 1950s and spent twenty years in a Soviet labor camp. When authorities finally released him in the 1970s, he discovered he no longer wanted to return to Britain. Russia had become his true home. Now communism has collapsed and the world has learned that Alex survived the gulag. Officials arrive with news that will force him to confront his past and decide his future. The story moves between his brutal years in the camp, his quiet life in the village, and this single day when everything changes. For perhaps the first time in his life, Alex must make a choice that is entirely his own. The decision will determine whether he remains the man he has become or returns to the person he once was.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, second-chance
Setting: Russia, Soviet Union
Period: 1950s, 1970s
256 pages · Paperback · Picador
Content warnings: torture, violence