Us Conductors

''A wonderful book ... His story is so extraordinary and so beautifully and deftly told ... heartbreaking'' Observer, Books of the Year

''The grace of Michaels’s style makes these times and places seem entirely new. He succeeds at one of the hardest things a writer can do: he makes music seem to sing from the pages of a novel'' Giller Prize Jury

Locked in a cabin, on a ship bound for Leningrad, Lev Termen types a letter to Clara, his ‘one true love’. He recalls his early years as a scientist, inventing the musical theremin and other electric marvels, and the Kremlin’s dream that these creations could help infiltrate capitalism itself. Instead, Manhattan infiltrated Termen – he fell in love with the city’s jazz clubs and speakeasies, and with Clara, a beautiful young violinist.

When Termen’s spy games fall apart, he returns to find the Motherland not quite as he left it. Exiled to a Siberian gulag, with nothing but his wits to keep him alive, Termen is drawn ever deeper into the labyrinth of Stalin’s Russia. Only his feelings for Clara, passing through the ether like the theremin’s song, seem to show a way out.