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Thus begins Elizabeth Kostova´s spellbinding new novel about a young American woman, Alexandra Boyd, who has travelled to Sofia, Bulgaria, hoping that life abroad will salve the wounds left by the loss of her beloved brother. The year is 2003 and, soon after arriving in this elegant East European city, she helps an elderly couple into a taxi - and realises too late that she has accidentally kept one of their bags. Inside she finds an ornately carved wooden box engraved with a name: Stoyan Lazarov. Raising the hinged lid, she discovers that she is holding an urn filled with human ashes. Setting out on a journey to track down the Lazarov family and reunite them with their precious package, she finds ever more obstacles in her path even as her determination grows greater, and the mystery behind the significance of the urn deepens. Soon she will realize that this object is tied to the very darkest moments in the nation´s history, and that the stakes behind seeing it safely returned are higher than she could ever have imagined.

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