The new masterpiece by the award-winning author Alexander Orlow, a Russian oligarch known to all as "The General," has begun a new life in Berlin. However, the memories of his involvement in the First Chechen War haunt him. The darkest of these is the memory of the most brutal of all nights, after which nothing remained of the young Chechen woman Nura but a great unatoned guilt. The time for reckoning has come. In her new novel, Nino Haratischwili explores the abysses that have opened up among the ruins of the crumbling Soviet Empire. The Cat and the General is a tension-filled, psychologically profound novel of guilt and atonement about the war in the countries and in the minds, about the longing for peace and redemption. Like in a Rubik's Cube, the fates of the characters intertwine around a hidden axis.