A hunt for optimism

This book circles obsessively around a single scene of interrogation in which a writer is subjected to a show trial for his unorthodoxy. Using multiple perspectives, fragments, and aphorisms, and bearing the vulnerability of both the Russian Jewry and the anti-Bolshevik intelligentsia-who had unwittingly become the enemies of the people. This book satirizes Soviet censorship and the ineptitude of Soviet leaders with acerbic panache.