Ambassador of the Dead

A harrowing tale of ambitions gone awry, and an unflinching meditation on exile and assimilation and the cost of love.

One Sunday morning, Nick Blud, a successful Boston physician, is home in bed when he receives a phone call from Adriana Kruk, the mother of a boyhood friend. The beautiful Adriana, who once vacationed at her family's luxurious summer home on the Black Sea, now lives in a run-down apartment in New Jersey. Abandoned by her husband and estranged from her sons, she summons Nick back to his old neighborhood, where something unspeakable has happened--exactly what, no one is willing to say.

Askold Melnyczuk teaches at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and in the Bennington Graduate Writing Seminars