In a small apartment in New York, in the sweltering mid-summer heat, a group of Russian emigres gather around the sickbed of an artist named Alik. Nina, his wife, is desperate for Alik to be baptised; Irina, his ex-lover, a circus acrobat turned lawyer, quietly pays the bills; elderly Maria dispenses magical herbs; and Maika, Irina's fifteen-year-old daughter, prepares to lose the only man to make her laugh. As the visitors fuss and reminisce over Alik, in a corner of the crowded room the television shows the uprising outside the White House in Moscow and the tanks closing in on the city...

Many already see Daniel Stein, Interpreter, which won the Russian National Literary Prize, as the Great Russian novel of our time. Indeed, Ludmila Ulitskaya has earned accolades abroad for this groundbreaking work, now available in English. The novel tells the story of Daniel Stein, a Polish Jew who miraculously survives the Holocaust by working for the Gestapo as an interpreter. This charade allows him not only to save himself, but to help hundreds of others by sharing vital information with those in peril. After the war, he converts to Catholicism, and emigrates to Israel where he creates a Christian community. Daniel's willingness to communicate with all cultures stands as a symbol of love, humanity and tolerance. The author beautifully renders the life, of a modern saint, who inevitably ends his life as a martyr, the victim of his own will to help others at all costs. Though seemingly impossible, the life and destiny of Daniel Stein are not an invention — the character is based on the life of Oswald Rufeisen, the real Brother Daniel, a Carmelite Monk who lived at Stella Maris monastery on Mount Carmel in Haifa and who died in Israel in 1998.