The summer of 1992 in St Petersburg was one of the hottest for years. Duncan Fallowell was there to write a novel, but in the event he wrote hardly a word. From the moment of his arrival he was sucked into the world of clubs, bars and restaurants, swept away by its extraordinary architecture, embroiled in a thousand different conversations. He also fell in love, with Dima, a seventeen-year-old navel cadet. This is Fallowell's account of that summer, a book of enormous verve, joie de vivre - and sadness.