One Night in Winter (The Moscow Trilogy, 3)

It opens with the deaths of two teenagers, who shoot each other in what appears to be a tragic accident. But there is more to it than meets the eye. They were part of a club that adored the poems of Pushkin, and the shootings are the tragic outcome of their “game” – a recreation of the duel scene in Onegin – that expands into a huge scandal.

The book roams through the last days of the Soviet march on Berlin, drinking games at Stalin’s country home, the magnificence of the Bolshoi Theatre, interrogations, communal apartments, snow, sex and exile.

The thought that this sort of thing actually happened in Russia in the not too distant past is horrifying, that people could get into such trouble following a tragedy, that gets blown out of proportion, into a political intrigue that involves both the children and their parents is very scary. A well written book that makes you think how well off we all are not having to have lived under this sort of terrible rule.