A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, however, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into bizarre new forms; a ‘blind’ old man haunted by memories of the war; and an undersexed guide dog named Sammy Davis Jr, Jr. What they are looking for seems elusive – a truth hidden behind veils of time, language and the horrors of war. What they find turns all their worlds upside down …

‘An astonishing feat of writing: hilariously funny and deeply serious, a gripping narrative. Extraordinary’ 
The Times

‘Genuinely gripping, consistently entertaining, dazzlingly imaginative’ 
Evening Standard

‘Outrageously ambitious, extraordinarily moving and utterly successful’ 
Financial Times

‘Hilarious, exhilarating, often deeply moving’ 
Jewish Chronicle

‘Serious, funny, yet achingly heartbreaking’ 
Herald

‘Powerful and shocking. Burns with harsh and sincere emotion’ 
List

‘Spectacular – extremely funny, linguistically brilliant and at times very moving’ 
Observer

‘A work of genius. A new kind of novel … after it things will never be the same again. It will blow you away’ 
The Times

‘Wise, funny, unbearably sad. Speeds across the sky like a new-century comet heralding great events in the asteroid belt of fiction’ 
Financial Times

‘Astonishing … a shattering climax. A work of formidable talent’ 
Independent

‘An engaging work of wit and invention’ 
New Statesman

‘Effervescent and recklessly unordinary … so vibrant and playful … calling to mind Philip Roth, James Joyce, Laurence Sterne and Milan Kundera’ 
The Times Literary Supplement

‘A walloping debut’ 
Time Out

From Chapter 1:

My legal name is Alexander Perchov.  But all of my friends dub me Alex, because that is a more flaccid-to-utter version of legal name.  Mother dubs me Alexi-stop-spleening-me!, because I am always spleening her.  If you want to know why I am always spleening her, it is because I am always elsewhere with friends, and disseminating so much currency, and performing so many things that can spleen a mother. Father used to dub me Shapka, for the fur hat I would don even in the summer month.  He ceased dubbing me that because I ordered him to cease dubbing me that.  It sounded boyish to me, and I have always thought of myself as very potent and generative.  I have many many girls, believe me, and they all have a different name for me.  One dubs me Baby, not because I am a baby, but because she attends to me. Another dubs me All Night.  Do you want to know why?  I have a girl who dubs me Currency, because I disseminate so much currency around her.  She licks my chops for it.  I have a miniature brother who dubs me Alli.  I do not dig this name very much, but I dig him very much, so OK, I permit to dub me Alli.  As for his name, it is Little Igor, but Father dubs him Clumsy One, because he is always promenading into things.  It was only four days previous that he made his eye blue from a mismanagement with a brick wall.  If you're wondering what my bitch's name is, it is Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior.  She has this name because Sammy Davis, Junior was Grandfather's beloved singer, and the bitch is his, not mine, because I am not the one who thinks he is blind.

From Chapter 2:

It was March 18, 1791, when Trachim B's double-axle wagon either did or did not pin him against the bottom of the Brod River.  The young W twins were the first to see the curious flotsam rising to the surface: wandering snakes of white string, a crushed-vlevet glove with outstretched fingers, barren spools, schmootzy pince-nez, rasp-and boysenberries, feces, frillwork, the shards of a shattered atomizer, the bleeding red-ink script of a resolution:  I will...I will...