Communism would appear to have been kind to Anatoly Sukhanov, hero of The Dream Life of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin. The editor of an art journal that toes the party line, he has a handsome Moscow flat, a beautiful wife, two bright teenage children, a dacha and a chauffeur whose name he can never remember. He is full of the sort of complacent pride that comes before a most ignominious fall.

In 1985, as the Soviet Union stands on the cusp of glasnost and perestroika, his life begins to fall apart. The narrative takes on another layer as his suppressed past begins to rise before him and his present becomes increasingly surreal. We learn that his father was driven to insanity