Summer 1994. Viv has just turned 21 and is on her year abroad, studying the language, history and politics of a world that supposedly no longer exists: the Soviet Union.Instead, she finds herself studying the lead guitarist of a Ukrainian punk rock band. Utterly besotted, Viv follows him to festivals and dive bars around the country, travelling through a blur of wheat fields and valleys of sunflowers. The guitarist sings her love songs, teaches her Ukrainian, and gives her a persistent case of head lice. But is he serious about her? Or is she just another groupie? Between gigs, they stay with his elderly parents in a dusty Soviet city. His mother shows her the correct way to eat borsch. His dad lends her books by Taras Shevchenko, the national answer to Shakespeare. At parties, Viv and her new friends argue about whose turn it is to buy cigarettes and the best places to find Levi''s jeans. No-one debates whether to speak Russian or Ukrainian, where the border is, or whether the future
