The Russian Affair

February 14, 2011
Wallner's beautifully crafted if sometimes slow-moving evocation of 1970s Russia focuses on the struggles of 27-year-old Anna Tsazukhina, a house painter who lives in a small Moscow apartment with her famous poet father, Viktor Tsazukhin; her frail son, Petya; and her army officer husband, Leonid, though he's often on active duty far away. As she attempts to find food for her family and medicine for her son, she dreams of acquiring better living quarters. Once Anna begins an affair with Alexey Bulyagkov, a high government official, her everyday live becomes easier, but—this being Soviet-era Russia—she must pay a price. A KGB colonel recruits her to spy on Alexey and report on their affair. Wallner (April in Paris) ratchets up the suspense as he slowly peels away the layers of deceit. Patient readers willing to forgo flat-out action will be rewarded.

November 1, 2010

German author Wallner, who scored an international hit a few years back with April in Paris (which LJ's own Bette-Lee Fox recommended for all fiction collections), moves on from the World War II era to Cold War Moscow. Her father a disgraced poet and her soldier husband assigned seven time zones away, Anna Viktorovna falls for Soviet bigwig Alexey Bulgyakov. Then she's asked to spy on him. Good for the literary thriller crowd; with a reading group guide.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2011
A harrowing cat-and-mouse game of espionage begins when 29-year-old Moscow housepainter Anna Viktorovna attracts the attention of Deputy Minister for Research Planning Alexey Maximovich Bulgyakov. As their clandestine relationship develops, Annas friend, journalist Rosa Khleb, introduces her to KGB colonel A. I. Kamarovsky, who blackmails Anna into providing information about native Ukrainian Bulgyakov. Unable to refuse Kamarovsky, Anna benefits despite her torn loyalties: her chronically ill young son, Petya, receives specialized medical treatment, and her father, poet Viktor Ipalyevich Trazuklin, has his dissident reputation restored and his work published. But her husband, Leonid, a captain in the Red Army, ignores Kamarovsky and is posted to a frigid remote island eight time zones away from Moscow. German author Wallner (April in Paris, 2008) is as persuasive in writing about love as in detailing the chilly efficiency of a Soviet cold war operation in which Anna is no more than a pawn in an elaborate scheme that can turn deadly.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)