Richard Fassam-Wright launches a literary career with a master-class in storytelling set in the mucky murky mid-1970s when both the USA and USSR had reasons to push for the Cold War to be defrosted.
Will, a naive young English student goes to Moscow. His nine months there are a rite of passage as he encounters the best and the worst human nature has to offer and realises he is up against enemies from both sides of the Iron Curtain.
The author perfectly captures an era of deceit and duplicity with officials working to their own hidden agendas but what makes this story so compelling is his portrayal of the ordinary Russians - warm and generous - living in fear of their Soviet masters. It's a game of cat and mouse, compulsive and emotionally resonate.

A fantastic book that I will be purchasing a copy of now it has hit the book stores.

Thank you for the early read it was fascinating.

This was a fascinating moment in history, and I appreciated reading the novel's glimpse into that Soviet world through the ideas of a British student. The writing itself was somewhat uneven and there were times when the flow of the plot appeared naive and unlikely - and the character's reactions were also sometimes "on" and sometimes hard to believe.