Stalin is no longer among the living. In 1954, after three decades imprisoned, Ivan Grigorievich returns to Moscow to find that life there has continued without him. From the reunion with his cousin Nikolai, a scientist who has always remained faithful to the Party, or the walk through the place where the woman he loved lived, Iván becomes aware of the magnitude of the tragedy: freedom has not only been assassinated in politics, but also in agriculture, in philosophy and, above all, in the soul of the Russian people. Through the voice of the protagonist, Vasili Grossman delves into one of the darkest and most tragic periods of the 20th century, an era that begins with Lenin, continues with Stalin, and ends with that destiny that is born from the bones of a lost generation. An exceptional novel that, in addition to portraying the miseries of the human condition, is a cry against the nonsense of totalitarianism and the affirmation that freedom is man's most precious asset.