December 1950.
Two brothers barely out of adolescence attempt to flee Soviet Romania, which has already taken their parents from them. They are arrested, imprisoned, and quickly separated.
December 1989.
As the Romanian people have just overthrown and executed their Conducător, Horatio, a refugee in Brittany for over thirty-five years, gets into his car and drives toward Bucharest, hoping to find some trace of his younger brother. Throughout his journey across Europe, memories come flooding back—from captivity to solidarity, from torture to rebuilding. What has become of his brother in all this time? What remains of him?
A masterful, sensitive, and powerful novel that examines the bond between brothers and explores the effects of tyranny on the individual and their relationship to the world, when the political project of the “new man” is built on dehumanization.
