In June 1934, Stalin allegedly called Boris Pasternak and they spoke about the arrest of Osip Mandelstam- he wanted to know what Pasternak thought of the idea that Mandelstam had been arrested. Ismail Kadare explores the afterlife of this phone call using accounts of witnesses, reporters, writers such as Isaiah Berlin and Anna Akhmatova, wives, mistresses, biographers, and even archivists of the KGB. The results offer a meditation on power and political structure, and how literature and authoritarianism construct themselves in plain sight of one another. Kadare's reconstruction becomes a gripping mystery, as if true crime is being presented in mosaic. A little time ago the poet Mandelstam was arrested. What have you to say to that, Comrade Pasternak?