MOTHS

Opening in the 1930s, this stunning novel tells the parallel stories of afather and son whose lives take the reader through critical moments of mid20th-century European history, in miniature - from WWII and its aftermathto the Siberian Gulag. Alongside its Nabokovian precision and darkundercurrents, it has an unexpected black humour as well as a fantasticjazz sub-plot. A self-indulgent Dutch businessman finds himself caught up in theliberation of Auschwitz, imprisoned as a spy by the liberating Russianarmy, shipped off to Minsk and Moscow to play in a bizarre jazz band, andthen, when jazz beomes 'decadent' once more, to the Gulag, where hisestranged son, a long-distance runner, finally catches up with him...Meanwhile, the boy (called Dolboy, because he looks like a tiny blonddoll) is brought up by his doting childless aunt in the flat farmlands ofeast Holland, post-war. Wherever he goes, he runs, past dark forests,foxgloves, fields and birch trees. One day his running takes him to an oldmoated castle, where the summer house is full of moths - and he meets thecurious young girl who breeds and keeps the creatures. He becomes aworld-class runner, she a photographer. Vivid, allusive, heartbreaking and with an astonishing range and layersof meaning, this is a startlingly original, important and gripping novelabout people forced constantly to improvise their lives, aboutregeneration and the courage to embrace those single moments ofopportunity.