The Mozhaisk Road, the latest novel by the scholar Lesley Chamberlain, opens in Moscow in the winter of 1978. A 26-year-old woman, Gels, arrives from England wearing unsuitably high-heeled boots. Besotted with Russian literature and keen to shed her wealthy background, Gels hopes that spending time in a communist country will reveal ‘what I want to live for’. Her life intersects with an enormous cast of characters who quickly disillusion her. Among these are other Westerners in Russia for diplomacy or journalism and a dissident group led by the ageing Alexander Razumovsky. His designated successor, Boris Marlinsky, is kidnapped by officials, who woo him over a decadent weekend in the countryside. Marlinsky refuses to be their puppet and a sham trial follows. Gels is left certain that the regime is ‘venomous’ and, like the dissidents, hopes for a second revolution.

Gels’s surname is ‘Maybey’ and she is certainly a figure of indecision. Although the novel is mostly narrated in close third person, dipping into the minds of many characters, Gels interjects with first-person commentary, sometimes implying that the book should be read as her creation: ‘I have the imagination to