She is twenty years old and wants to become an actress. Having grown up in France, she returns to Russia to live with her grandfather and enroll at the Moscow National Theatre School. But at the School as in her family, something resists.
While rehearsing Chekhov’s Three Sisters, Vladimir Putin’s re-election triggers protests in the streets. In the evenings, her grandfather comments on the news. His granddaughter questions him about the past. By way of answer, he sometimes places before her a photograph, a piece of clothing, a coin that once belonged to her great-great-grandfather. Here, this is yours. Objects that will become elements of an investigation.
What secrets lie hidden in the photographs of the green album? Why must one never speak near the front door? To uncover what she is not being told, the narrator will have to learn to listen to silences and to ask questions—out loud.
In this extraordinary novel, a journey to the furthest reaches of memory, Polina Panassenko plunges into the inheritance of a country, bringing to light lives shattered by the Gulag and the fear that passes from one generation to the next.
A country in which, despite everything, the hope of freedom and justice endures.
