Don't die before you're dead

the long version

An amusing look at the failed coup by Communist hardliners against President Gorbachev in August of 1991. The event is recounted through the eyes of such characters as a Red Army marshall, a jilted husband, a cellist, a soccer star, even Boris Yeltsin himself. By the author of Fatal Half Measures. World-famous since the sixties as Russia's most renowned poet and political dissident, Yevgeny Yevtushenko has written an extraordinary epic novel about life, love, and politics in contemporary Russia. The attempted overthrow of Gorbachev's government in 1991 is the background for this ambitious work, the author's first novel in over a decade. In this stunning amalgam of autobiography, political thriller, love story, and sharp satirical comedy, Yevtushenko chronicles the lives and times of a large cast of characters, some fictional and some real.