<p><em>All That Is Solid Melts into Air</em> is a gripping end-of-empire novel, charting the collapse of the Soviet Union through the focalpoint of the Chernobyl disaster. Part historical epic, part love story, it recalls <em>The English</em> Patient in its mix of emotional intimacy and sweeping landscape.</p><p>In a run-down apartment block in Moscow, a nine-year-old piano prodigy practices silently for fear of disturbing the neighbors.</p><p>In a factory on the outskirts of the city, his aunt makes car parts, trying to hide her dissident past.</p><p>In the hospital, a leading surgeon buries himself deep in his work to avoid facing his failed marriage.</p><p>And in a rural village in the Ukraine, a teenage boy wakes up to a sky of the deepest crimson. In the fields, the ears of the cattle are dripping blood. Ten miles away, at the Chernobyl Power Plant, something unimaginable has happened.</p><p>Now their lives will change forever.</p><p><em>All That Is Solid Melts Into Air</em> is an astonishing end-of-empire novel by a major new talent.</p>