num_pages: 372
description: In Jennifer duBoiss mesmerizing and exquisitely rendered debut novel a long-lost letter links two disparate characters each searching for meaning against seemingly insurmountable odds. With uncommon perception and wit duBois explores the power of memory the depths of human courage and the endurance of love.In St. Petersburg Russia world chess champion Aleksandr Bezetov begins a quixotic quest: He launches a dissident presidential campaign against Vladimir Putin. He knows he will not winand that he is risking his life in the processbut a deeper conviction propels him forward. In Cambridge Massachusetts thirty-year-old English lecturer Irina Ellison struggles for a sense of purpose. Irina is certain she has inherited Huntingtons diseasethe same cruel illness that ended her fathers life. When Irina finds an old photocopied letter her father wrote to the young Aleksandr Bezetov she makes a fateful decision. Her father asked the chess prodigy a profound questionHow does one proceed in a lost cause?but never received an adequate reply. Leaving everything behind Irina travels to Russia to find Bezetov and get an answer for her father and for herself.
language: English
title: A Partial History of Lost Causes
publisher: The Dial Press