In May 1937 a man in his early thirties waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now. And few who are taken to the Big House ever return.

"BARNES'S MASTERPIECE" - OBSERVER

"Stunning" - Sunday Times

"A profound meditation on power and the relationship of art and power… It is a masterpiece of sympathetic understanding… I don’t think Barnes has written a finer, more truthful or more profound book" - Scotsman

"A tour de force by a master novelist at the top of his game" - Daily Express

Julian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and four works of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing to Be Frightened Of. He was awarded the David Cohen Prize for lifetime contribution to literature in 2011, and the Légion d'Honneur in 2017.