Journey to Zilair

Nine fictional stories, set in Russia, tell of the lives of ordinary men and women in the turbulent years after the 1917 Russian revolution. A parcel from Moscow that eludes the secret police, is discovered to be a love letter without words; a man returns from exile in Siberia and settles a debt; a little girl loses the love of her life - a Caucasian sheepdog; the murdered Tzar's daughter, Anastasia, is disturbingly reborn; an old man who experienced the revolution, communism, purges, poverty and war, finds solace in his much-thumbed copy of Candide, and in feeding pigeons; an oligarch's party ends in violence; following an accidental, encounter online, a woman becomes an artist's muse; an impromptu arm-wrestling match disrupts a Siberian Christmas; and a country boy finds courage in a spectacular act of folly on the centenary of the revolution - October 2017.