A Russian Requiem — Roland Merullo

Two weeks before the failed right-wing coup of August 1991, Anton Czesich, an American in his late forties who has spent a mostly disillusioning career working overseas for the U.S. government, arrives in Moscow to take charge of a volatile American food distribution program-a program administered by Julie Stirvin, the love of his youth. She and Czesich have their own history, their own protracted cold war. Many miles away, in the mining center of Vostok, Soviet bureaucrat Serghei Propenko, a former champion boxer, is in the midst of his own midlife crisis-partly personal, partly political. Modest and decent, surrounded by a household of strong-willed and politically astute women, Propenko is pinched between his traditional ambitions and concern for his very untraditional daughter, Lydia. As Czesich's and Propenko's fates intersect, it becomes clear that both men are partially paralyzed by the same suspicions and fears that crippled Soviet-American relations for so long. A Russian Requiem is a page-turner with depth, a finely crafted novel about the small piece of history each of us bears and the way our intimate lives reflect and echo in the politics of nations. Speckled with humor and irony, rich in both psychological and political drama, it carries the reader on a post-cold war voyage through the Russian-and American-soul.