A tight, captivating story of a naive childs encounters with a Soviet dictator, the 20th novel by Robert Littell

After the sudden death of his nuclear physicist father and the arrest of his mother during the Stalinist purge of Jewish doctors, young Leon Rozentalintellectually precocious and possessing a disarming candoris hiding from the NKVD in the secret rooms of the House on the Embankment, a large building in Moscow where many Soviet officials and apparatchiks live and work. One day after following a passageway, Leon meets Koba, an old man whose apartment is protected by several guards. Koba is a high-ranking Soviet officer with troubling insight into the thoughts and machinations of Comrade Stalin.

Through encounters between a naive boy and a paranoid tyrant, Robert Littell creates in Comrade Koba a nuanced portrayal of the Soviet dictator, showing his human side and his simultaneous total disregard for and ignorance of the suffering he inicted on the Russian people. The charm and spontaneity of young Leon make him an irresistible characterand not unlike Holden Cauleld, whom he admits to identifying withcaught in the spiders web of the story woven by this enigmatic old man.