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An old seventies trend was making its way back into the suburban homes of Montreal, Quebec. Husbands and wives were having consensual sex with other married couples and trying to keep the secret under wraps, unsuccessfully. Swapping. Swinging. An organized sex agreement; and to a thirty-nine year-old mother of two, like Valerie Matthews, the idea was riveting. With forty looming, Val wanted to spice...

Late Soviet stagnation, Moscow. Alyosha - a writer who suffers from fits accompanied by memory loss - admits himself to a psychiatric institute for experimental treatment. Inspired by Ivan the Terrible’s “Memorial Book of the Disgraced” and his own spiritual crisis, Alyosha has been trying to record the memories of people in his life who "died before their time, leaving nothing behind except in my...