Rudolf Nureyev was a dancing genius, a celebrity with a large ego, and a private man who veiled his life in myth and deception. Daringly embellishing Nureyev's life, from his humble beginnings as a Russian peasant to his later years as a Cold War exile who earned worldwide fame, Colum McCann tells the fascinating story of ballet's greatest performer through a chorus of compelling voices. From the obscure to the famous, from the real to the imagined, shoemakers, nurses, translators, and hustlers take center stage alongside Margot Fonteyn, Erik Bruhn, and Andy Warhol. At the heart of this lavish spectacle stands the dancer himself - willful, lustful, ambitious, and driven by a tragically unfulfilled perfectionism. In vivid, electric prose McCann evokes the man behind the mask and the myth. The result is a monumental 20th-century story of love, art, fame, and exile.