Vast Emotions and Imperfect Thoughts

A grieving film director in Rio is visited by a carnival dancer who leaves him with a box full of precious gems. A few days later the dancer is dead, a man in a raincoat lurks outside the director's door, and a mysterious German producer surfaces with an irresistible offer: to make a film based on a story by the director's favorite author, the great Russian writer Isaac Babel. From this elemental framework the adventure begins.

Dodging a horde of local smugglers, the director soon finds himself fleeing to Berlin, where a web of literary and political skulduggery awaits him. Rumor has it that an unpublished Babel manuscript has survived the Stalinist purges and is now being shopped by a lovesick Soviet bureaucrat. Forsaking caution, money, and at times his own sanity, the director makes a foray into East Berlin in pursuit of the one true thing that still stirs his heart.

Already a bestseller in Italy, Mexico, and his native Brazil, Rubem Fonseca's newest novel is a rollicking adventure intothe high camp world of carnival, the intricate history of precious gems, and the subtle craft of filmmaking. It is also a piercing account of a man whose life is resurrected by art just when tragedy threatens to paralyze him.