I had read the remarkable book on Stalin by Simon Montefiore (The Red Tsar yard) and I was curious to read a novel by one of the leading specialists of Stalin. I was delighted and literally grabbed by the book. Su bottom of a fairly simple love story, the author takes us into like there was in the absurdities of the Soviet system: arrest, interrogation, preposterous accusations, suspicion of conspiracy ... The novel plunges us into the depths the terrible Lubyanka, the Moscow prison where so many men, women and children were crushed by the Soviet machine. The dialogues are fair and strong, the incredible atmosphere. The characters have a real dimension. And scenes with Stalin and his clique Politburo, tasty and terrible. One enters this novel without wanting to get out. Roll on the next one!
