ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I suppose anyone fortunate enough to know his grandparents feels they come from a vanished world, which of course is right. Time progresses. The world into which we are born is not the world in which we live; the world that formed people fifty or sixty years our senior must be all the more distant.

But I wonder if this feeling isn’t accentuated for the children and grandchildren of immigrants. It isn’t just the time but also the place that created our ancestors which vanished—often literally. Where today is the Soviet Union, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Prussia? Hearing about tenement or shtetl life at a groaning dinner table in a safe, comfortable home in the American suburbs produces an odd feeling: a disconnect, an anomie driven by a combination of gratitude and guilt that can be defeated only by curiosity, which rescues everything and everyone.

This is all by way of saying that just as my protagonist found unexpectedly familiar echoes in Moscow, so did I.

My father’s parents, though born in the United States, spoke Yiddish before they spoke English. With a feeling more intense than fondness and more sensual than reverie I remember their brown shag carpet; their kitchen with yellow flowers on its wallpaper and a permanent smell of roasting meat, garlic, dill, and bread; their patio with its multicolored concrete squares; and the faded crescent moon on their doorbell.

They rarely traveled except to see family, rarely ate out except at familiar restaurants, and lived (at least when I knew them) the routine, contented, grateful lives of survivors. It was not until I moved to Russia that I understood just how Russian a home they had.

My grandmother expanded her world through books: she was an English teacher with a particular fondness for English poetry, and could recite Tennyson and Browning as easily as she could swear under her breath in Yiddish. Pinpointing influences is a game best left to barflies, biographers, and blowhards, but there might be something there. Anyway, she was born Lillian Vilatzer. I gave Jim her name.

I plowed, skimmed, and pecked my way through dozens of books on Russia. Of particular help were Gulag, by Anne Applebaum; Siberian Dawn, by Jeffrey Tayler; Voices from Chernobyl, by Svetlana Alexievich and Keith Gessen; and A Taste of Russia, by Darra Goldstein.

I was lucky in my acquaintances in Moscow: I am grateful to Jeffrey Tayler and Tatiana Shchukina, and to Andrew Miller and Emma Bell, for their hospitality, warmth, insight, patience, and good humor.

I am also gifted with wonderful colleagues at The Economist. Robert Cottrell and Daniel Franklin rescued me from the depths of unemployment and penury. Emily Bobrow, Alex Travelli, Jessica Gallucci, Charlotte Howard, and Roger McShane made coming to work in New York a pleasure; Rachel Horwood, Robert Guest, Adrian Wooldridge, Zanny Minton-Beddoes, Stephen Stromberg, and Brendan Greeley do the same in Washington.

And I would also be remiss if I failed to thank my friend and former colleague Robert Schlesinger for first suggesting the notion—more than ten years ago—of a Jew named Seamus.

My portrait of embassy employees and spies is pure fiction: I met none of either breed in Moscow.

Along those same lines, my novel contains a disproportionate number of nefarious, scheming Russians. I hope it isn’t necessary to say that’s because it’s a novel involving nefarious, scheming people who are also Russian. Ordinary makes bad copy. I trust that behind and beyond all of these obviously fictional characters, readers can see my deep love and respect for the city of Moscow, and for Russia’s people, culture, and history (if not for its past or present government).

Rumors of the book editor’s demise are greatly exaggerated: Liza Darnton, Randee Marullo, and Eamon Dolan worked wonders with this manuscript, and I’m very grateful for their patience, attention, and sage counsel. I could not hope to work with a better agent and person than Jim Rutman. It’s no coincidence that my Russian American protagonist has the same ginned-up first name.

Finally, everyone knows that second-book syndrome is hard on the author, but spare a thought for the author’s spouse, too. I just had to live with it; Alissa had to hear about it. She bore the brunt of my moodiness, grumpiness, and persistent doubts throughout this process, and showed more faith in me than I did in myself. On the morning I turned in this manuscript, I promised her three weeks without worries or complaints. I almost made it to lunch.