A tight, captivating story of a naive child's encounters with a Soviet
dictator, the 20th novel by Robert Littell
After the sudden death of his nuclear physicist father and the arrest of
his mother during the Stalinist purge of Jewish doctors, young Leon
Rozental--intellectually precocious and possessing a disarming
candor--is hiding from the NKVD in the secret rooms of the House on the
Embankment, a large building in Moscow where many Soviet officials and
apparatchiks live and work. One day after following a passageway, Leon
meets Koba, an old man whose apartment is protected by several guards.
Koba is a high-ranking Soviet officer with troubling insight into the
thoughts and machinations of Comrade Stalin.
Through encounters between a naive boy and a paranoid tyrant, Robert
Littell creates in Comrade Koba a nuanced portrayal of the Soviet
dictator, showing his human side and his simultaneous total disregard
for and ignorance of the suffering he inflicted on the Russian people.
The charm and spontaneity of young Leon make him an irresistible
character--and not unlike Holden Caulfield, whom he admits to
identifying with--caught in the spider's web of the story woven by this
enigmatic old man.
