Loved this! It reminded me a little of Zagreb Cowboy in it's farcical but truth based storyline. Rollicking story, propulsive plot.

A decades spanning mystery about surviving the Soviet Empire and its disintegration featuring an array of eccentric characters.

Jonathan Garfinkel has written this book at a really awkward time, obviously. But it's a great book and I hope it does not affect the level of interest it sparks, except for the positive. The title is fabulous. The book is funny. We could all stand to learn a little more about Cold War Russia, if only to understand how they got from there to here. Recommend.

This book is an utterly wild ride, where the reader hangs on to the coattails of the collapse of the Soviet Union, independence movements in former Soviet states, the stories of spies and lovers and liars and writers. Party watchers, enigmatic double and triple agents, provocateurs, students--the cast list is long and complex, and often unbelievable, but nonetheless this is a compelling read about political, journalistic, and personal independence, personal reckonings, and the unpredictability of life in Russia and Georgia in the late 1980s-early 2000s. It took me back to reading Andrea Lee's Russian Journal and made me re-read some Akhmatova. I will admit, though, that the author's afterward was even more interesting than the novel, and wish a little that he had extended that into a longer form instead of or alongside this book.