One of Russia’s most renowned literary figures and a Man Booker International Prize nominee, Ludmila Ulitskaya presents what may be her final novel. Jacob’s Ladder is a family saga spanning a century of recent Russian history-and represents the summation of the author’s career, which has been devoted to sharing the absurd and tragic tales of twentieth-century life in her nation.

Spanning the seeming promise of the prerevolutionary years, to the dark Stalinist era, to the corruption and confusion of the present day, Jacob’s Ladder is a pageant of romance, betrayal, and memory. With a scale worthy of Tolstoy, it asks how much control any of us have over our lives-and how much is in fact determined by history, by chance, or indeed by the genes passed down by the generations that have preceded us into the world.