The Keeper of Antiquities is simultaneously one of the great Russian modern novels and a key to understanding the terrible Stalinist purges of the later Thirties. Set far away from Moscow in the remote Kazakhstan capital of Alma-Ata, The Keeper of Antiquities beings with a leisurely, almost scholarly air - like a devious story by Borges. But very soon we find ourselves watching with horror as professional rivalry between the keeper of the town"s museum and the chief librarian turns into a deadly struggle for control of the meaning of the past - and therefore of the present.