Andrei Makine: Confessions of a Lapsed Standard-Bearer [2000]

Addressing himself to his childhood friend Arkadi from exile in Paris, Alyosha recreates their happy years in a village commune outside Leningrad in the 60s, when the sky was always blue and each summer they marched with drum and trumpet at communist youth camp, their eyes set on the glorious future promised by the propaganda machine - until they learn the full horror of what their parents had suffered during the war and under Stalin, and begin to see through the lies.

'Moving and gripping' The Times