In this "urgent and enthralling reckoning with family and history" (Andrew Solomon), an American writer returns to Russia to face a past that still haunts him. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY JENNIFER SZALAI, THE NEW YORK TIMES Alex Halberstadt's quest takes him across the troubled, enigmatic land of his birth, where decades of Soviet totalitarianism shaped and fractured three generations of his family...