This novel opens on a battlefield: trudging back from the front through a ravaged & icy wasteland their horses dying around them their own hunger rendering them almost savage the Russian soldiers are exhausted as they reach the city of Ufa desperate for food & shelter. They find both & then music & dance. & there spinning unafraid among them dancing for the soldiers & anyone else who'll watch him is one small pale boy Rudolf. This is Colum Mc Cann's dancer: Rudolf a prodigy at six years old who became the greatest dancer of the century who redefined dance rewrote his own life & died of AIDS before anyone knew he had it. This is an extraordinary life transformed into extraordinary fiction by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation. One kind of masculine grace is perfectly matched to another in Colum Mc Cann's beautiful & daring new novel.