It is 1998.
The old Soviet Union is dead, and the new Russia is awash in corruption and despair.
Manya and Yuri Zalinikov, secular Jews -- he, a gifted mathematician recently dismissed from the Academy; she, a talented concert pianist -- sell black market electronics in a market stall, until threatened with a gun by a mafioso in search of protection money.
Yuri sinks into a Chekhovian melancholy, emerging to announce that he wants to live as a Jew in Israel.
Manya and their daughter, Galina.
Aubade Publishing Jerusalem as a second language, paperback/rochelle distelheim
