The book begins with the story of how Napoleon Bonaparte found himself in the house of Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis, the Duke of Richelieu and governor of Odessa, in 1807. A brief liaison with the duke’s 19-year-old Italian servant girl, Luisa Ravelli, resulted in the birth of a son. The bombing of Odessa by an Anglo-French squadron in 1854 and the landing of French troops in Odessa in 1918 had the objective of finding that illegitimate son. The protagonist of the book, Yevgeny Rivilis, is...