A SUNDAY TIMES MUST READS PICK Boundless imagination and a vibrant style . . . a heroine of
unforgettable grit DAVID GROSSMAN A story of great beauty and surprise GARY SHTEYNGART The
townsfolk of Motal an isolated godforsaken town in the Pale of Settlement are shocked when
Fanny Keismann - devoted wife mother of five and celebrated cheese-maker - leaves her home at
two hours past midnight and vanishes into the night. True the husbands of Motal have been
vanishing for years but a wife and mother? Whoever heard of such a thing. What on earth
possessed her? Could it have anything to do with Fanny's missing brother-in-law who left her
sister almost a year ago and ran away to Minsk abandoning their family to destitution and
despair? Or could Fanny have been lured away by Zizek Breshov the mysterious ferryman on the
Yaselda river who in a strange twist of events seems to have disappeared on the same night?
Surely there can be no link between Fanny and the peculiar roadside murder on the way to
Telekhany which has left Colonel Piotr Novak head of the Russian secret police scratching
his head. Surely a crime like that could have nothing to do with Fanny Keismann however the
people of Motal might mutter about her reputation as a vilde chaya a wild animal . . . Surely
not. Translated from the Hebrew by Orr Scharf
