'BARNES'S MASTERPIECE'
- OBSERVERIn 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 & few who are taken to the Big House ever return Stunning' Sunday Times A profound meditation on power & the relationship of art & 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