• Marooned in Soviet Lithuania in 1958 with his communist mother, a Canadian expatriate strives to launch a fashionable bohemian restaurant while the KGB listens in from the basement.
• Pitched as Grand Budapest Hotel meets A Gentleman in Moscow.
• Inspired by the book behind the opera La Bohème, European café culture, and true history — including an appearance by Jean-Paul Sartre.
• Each chapter opens with a narratively relevant, restaurant-quality recipe, such as recipes for apple compote, chicken Kiev, and Napoleon cake.
• In this Cold War comic novel, characters scramble to make rich lives under a repressive regime and find consolation through good food, humour, and warm friendships.
• Antanas Sileika was Canadian Prime Minister Mulroney’s translator to the Lithuanian president.
• In 1975, Antanas Sileika stayed at the real-life café that inspired this novel, dined on its signature dish, chicken Kiev, while the KGB listened in from a microphone in the bread basket.