“Music illuminates a person and provides him with his last hope; even Stalin, a butcher, knew that.” So said the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, whose

Presents the often tumultuous relationship between Shostakovich and Stalin, with Shostakovich striving to remain true to his musical ideals, at the same that he

The acclaimed classical composer chronicles his life and work in twentieth-century Soviet Russia with the help of a distinguished musicologist. Since the time o

From the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending comes an extraordinary fictional portrait of the relentlessly fascinating Russian mu

Originally published: Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2015.