Yelena Moskovich

For the first ten years of her life, Jana was a simple Czech girl, her days run with grey precision by the Czechoslovakian State Security. Then the raven-haired girl Zorka appeared. Jana, now an interpreter in Paris for a Czech medical supply company, hasn't seen Zorka in a decade. Aimee is in Paris too, mourning the death of her wife Dominique. As Aimee and Jana's stories slowly circle through the surreal fluctuations of the past and present, they lead inexorably together to a mysterious bar on Paris's Rue de Prague... 'Virtuoso' is an audacious, mesmerising novel of grief, revolt, identity and first and last loves.