Description

The Investigator is set in the mid 20th century USSR. With Joseph Stalin at the helm the post-war Soviet society struggles to rebuild and heal the nation of its multiple wounds. Nothing comes easy. The authorities are being confronted with new and quite creative criminal structures that shatter socialist ideals.

A young woman is murdered in a typical Soviet town somewhere in Ukraine. In the spirit of the era everyone is a suspect. Many theories of the crime emerge and to solve the mystery an investigator is being summoned - a strong man, former intelligence officer, tested by war. Now his purpose is in fighting malignant elements in the entrusted to him territory. But he is not the only hero in this story - there’s also a plural protagonist with a loud and obnoxious voice desperate to be heard - this voice is exactly the reason why Khemlin wrote The Investigator, a striking novel about Soviet life that has never been revealed before.

Margarita Khemlin

Margarita Khemlin is a Jewish-Russian author and winner of the Russian Booker Prize and the Big Book Prize. Khemlin began with a modest dishwashing job in a café decades ago while working hard to fulfill her writing dream. She never gave up and many manuscripts later she is a prolific and celebrated novelist in today’s Russia. Since 2012 Khemlin is also one of the jurors of The O’Henry Award in the USA.