Sukhanov returns to Moscow on a train after leaving Nina at the Dacha, and in a dream finds himself in 1957, with Nina showing him a secret storehouse of paintings forbidden to be viewed in public. Malevich, Filonov, Kandinsky, Chagall - legendary Russian artists whose works he has never seen.

He feels anger at the country that has condemned its greatest masters to oblivion, but realises that Nina believes that he can be, and perhaps already is, as great as they are.

Set in the dawning days of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika, The Dream Life of Sukhanov is the story of one man's battle with his true nature amidst the Soviet state's struggle with its own identity. Olga Grushin opens a window on to the soul of an artist who cannot escape his own vision amidst a transient and unsettling world.

Olga Grushin was born in Moscow in 1971 and spent her childhood in Moscow and Prague. In 1989 she became the first Soviet citizen to enrol for a full-time degree in the United States while retaining Soviet citizenship. In 2006 she was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers and named one of Grant's Best Young American Novelists in 2007. She has published two novels: The Dream Life of Sukhanov (2006) and The Concert Ticket (published in the US as The Line) in April 2010. Olga lives in Washington D.C.

"A stunning fictional debut": The Independent

"Haunting": The Observer

"Heartbreaking": Vogue

"Wonderful": Daily Telegraph

"It breathes new life into American literary fiction"
The Washington Post

Abridged by Jeremy Osborne

Directed by Marilyn Imrie
A Sweet Talk Production for BBC Radio 4. Show less