In the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union, ten-year-old Sasha idolizes his father, a devoted Communist, but when police take his father away and leave Sasha homeless, he is forced to examine his own perceptions, values, and beliefs.

When twelve-year-old Arcady is sent to a children's home after his parents are declared enemies of the state in Soviet Russia, soccer becomes a way to secure extra rations, respect, and protection but it may also be his way out if he can believe in and love another person--and himself.

Dedicated to Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, a first novel since the author's Man Booker Prize-winning The Sense of an Ending reimagines the young musician's difficult creative compromises in the aftermath of his denouncement by Joseph Stalin.

"Winter Work is an exhilarating spy thriller set in East Germany after the fall of Berlin Wall, about a Stasi officer investigating the murder of a colleague who is helped by Claire Saylor. Emil Grimm, a Stasi colonel, has decamped to his dacha in the woods outside of Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall. On a walk one morning, he discovers the body of a fellow intelligence officer with whom he was involved in a clandestine mission. Now Emil is...