This story is essentially a love letter to a young American musician called Clara -”the finest theremin player the world will ever know” - who has spurned Leon’s advances and married someone else.

Just a typewriter, just paper and ink, just this story to set down in solitude, as the distance widens between us. The book opens with Leon onboard a ship “plunging from New York back to Russia” .īut the door to my cabin is locked. And ever since, I’ve been thinking about Lev/Leon and marvelling at his extraordinary life. I’m going to be completely up front and stake my colours to the mast, or the flag to the pole, or whatever that saying is and confess that this is my favourite novel on this year’s Giller Prize shortlist. It’s the kind of book that takes you on an adventure and is told in such a refreshingly intimate way that I felt slightly bereft when I finished the book (about a month ago) because I did not want the journey to end. After living in the US for many years, he was repatriated to Russia and imprisoned in a gulag, where he worked in a secret laboratory inventing devices for Soviet espionage.Ī book featuring a scientist as the lead character may sound like a strange concept, but it works extraordinarily well, probably because Michaels gives Dr Theremin such a compelling voice - part arrogant, part naive, often bewildered and constantly lovelorn - and adds a few fictionalised elements to his character - he practices kung fu, for instance - which gives the story an almost surreal quality. Sean Michaels’ debut novel, Us Conductors, is a fictionalised account of the life of Russian engineer and physicist Lev Sergeyevich Termen (1896-1993) - later known as Leon Theremin - who invented the electronic musical instrument that takes his name: the theremin*. Fiction – paperback Tin House Books 459 pages 2014.

Us Conductors by Sean Michaels