DESCRIPTION

A brilliant, promising interpreter, the Russian Cotonov has a sudden breakdown during a Geneva summit with Gorbachev and Reagan. Then he vanishes. Out of this scant material, Andreas Fontana builds a detective story in which the solution is never given, yet various evidence is put forward. At the story’s center lies the unsolved mystery of Cotonov, the very image of instability over an abyss, as are all forms of communication.