A great Russian love story. Anouar Benmalek's most personal novel. A fascinating journey into Stalin's USSR.

Leningrad, 1978: The elegant Irina, a soprano with dreams of grandeur, approaches Walid, an Algerian student who has gone to Russia to follow in Napoleon's footsteps, at the entrance to the Hermitage Museum. She asks for his help to get to the "small Italian room," where a Caravaggio painting is housed, without having to wait in line. Then she disappears. He develops a passion for Russian opera, hoping to find the beautiful stranger again. Continuing his romantic exploration of history, Anouar Benmalek takes us, through the fate of Irina's grandfather, into the dark history of the USSR.