Synopses & Reviews
Present-day Russia is the setting for this stunning new novel from Robert Harris, author of the bestsellers
Fatherland and
Enigma.
Archangel tells the story of four days in the life of Fluke Kelso, a dissipated, middle-aged former Oxford historian, who is in Moscow to attend a conference on the newly opened Soviet archives.
One night, Kelso is visited in his hotel room by an old NKVD officer, a former bodyguard of the secret police chief Lavrenty Beria. The old man claims to have been at Stalin's dacha on the night Stalin had his fatal stroke, and to have helped Beria steal the dictator's private papers, among them a notebook.
Kelso decides to use his last morning in Moscow to check out the old man's story. But what starts as an idle inquiry in the Lenin Library soon turns into a murderous chase across nighttime Moscow and up to northern Russia--to the vast forests near the White Sea port of Archangel, where the final secret of Josef Stalin has been hidden for almost half a century.
Archangel combines the imaginative sweep and dark suspense of Fatherland with the meticulous historical detail of Enigma. The result is Robert Harris's most compelling novel yet.
From the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
Fluke Kelso is in Moscow to attend a conference on the newly opened Soviet archives. At his hotel, he meets a man who claims to have been with Stalin when he died. Kelso checks out the old man's story. But what begins as idle curiosity soon turns into a murderous chase across Russia...
About the Author
Robert Harris has been a television correspondent with the BBC and a newspaper columnist for the
London Sunday Times. His novels have sold more than six million copies and been translated into thirty languages. He lives in Berkshire, England, with his wife and three young children.
From the Hardcover edition.