Dimensions
141 x 223 x 17mm
Two boys, Alyosha and Arkady, grow up on the outskirts of a small town near Leningrad during the sixties. Winters might be harsh, food scarce and their fathers physically and mentally crippled by the war, but their days are rich in the adventures of childhood, secure in the warmth of their small community and protected from the horrors of the past by their parents' discretion. And each summer brings communist youth camp, where the friends march with their bugle and drum towards the glorious future.
From the perspective of exile in Paris, Alyosha looks back on those halcyon days and recreates the summer in which everything changed: a summer of mysteries revealed, of rebellion and quiet tragedy. Even then, not all the secrets of the past surfaced. Only as a young soldier in Afghanistan did Alyosha begin to fit the final pieces into the puzzle.
