This compelling account of an American student's adventures in Russia is a classic revelation of her eternal qualities. The unforgettable cast of characters is led by his beautiful, capricious girlfriend and a supreme hedonist who has been called The Russian Falstaff. Submerged in the supposedly puritan country's private devotion to food, drink, sex, and despair, the narrator, a London reviewer found, "seems to catch the soul of the Soviet citizen." "Feifer is possibly unique," a second London critic delighted, "for having written a book with several layers of brilliance."