Arcade, New York, 2011, 1^st pr thus.  ISBN 1-61145-0-54-3 / 978-1-61145-054-5.  Trade soft cover, 241 pages followed by Reading Group Guide.  Unread copy; pages lightly tanning.  ‘Every summer young Andrei visits his grandmother, Charlotte Lemonnier, whom he loves dearly.  In a dusty village overlooking the vast Russian steppes, she captivates him with wondrous tales – watching Proust play tennis in Neuilly, Tsar Nicholas II’s visit to Paris, French president Felix Faure dying in the arms of his mistress.  But from his mysterious grandmother Andrei also learns of a Russia he has never known:  a country of famine and misery, brutal injustice, and the hopeless chaos of war.  Enthralled, he weaves her stories into his own secret universe of memory and dream.  A poignant story of a Soviet boy’s ascent into adulthood in the 1960s and ‘70s…’ (from rear wrap)