HYDROELECTRIC JOY by Alexander Markov

Vadim Rudenko, a young hydraulic engineer and amateur filmmaker, is working on the construction of the Aswan Dam in Egypt, at the cost of his burgeoning relationship with Vera, who has stayed behind in the USSR. Drawing on an epistolary account and previously unseen archive material, Alexander Markov brilliantly evokes a generation for whom individual happiness was tied to the destructive rise of industrial socialism.