★Awards: Finalist of the Russian Prize 2010
★Rights sold: Germany, Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Turkey, Labyrinth Bulgaria China!
★The total printing of the novel is 250 000 copies!
★This gripping art-forgery crime drama takes the reader through epochs and countries (Spain in the 17th century, Leningrad under the Siege and at the end of the 1970s, the preand post-war Ukrainian Vinnitsa, present-day Vatican, Jerusalem, and Toledo and Córdoba in Spain) to tell a spellbinding and dramatic story of artistic genius. In thrilling detail, the novel explores the eternal confl icts of destiny vs. human will, family history and the individual, and Jewish devotion to a homeland and the fascination with the nation’s (and a single family’s) history vs. the unbridled, spacious lavishness of the Russian soul.

　　Dina Rubina is an Israeli Russian-language writer. Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1953, DinaRubina had her first stories published in 1970s in Yunost (Youth) magazine. She has received numerous awards, and is the bestselling author of over 40 titles, including eight novels. Dina Rubina’s novels and novellas have been made into films, adapted for TV, and staged in theaters in Russia and Israel. Dina Rubina is the Big Book Award winner (2007) for the novel On the Sunny Side of the Street and the Russian Prize finalist for the novel the White Dove of Cordoba. the total print run of the novel the White Dove of Cordoba is 180,000 copies to date. Each new title by Dina Rubina is published in a first edition of 80,000 copies. Since 1990 Dina Rubina has lived in Ma’ale-Adumim, Israel with her family, artist Boris Karafelov, her daughter, and grandchildren.


　　Zakhar Cordovin is both a consummate art forger touched by true genius, and an engaging intellectual, not simply another dubious hero in a long line of perpetrators of art crime. Impudent and passionate in equal measure about love, life, and art, Cordovin has to pay the highest price for his own crimes, but also for the dramas and mysteries permeating the centuries-long history of the Sephardic family of the Cordoveras.

　　Born in the post-war Ukrainian town of Vinnitsa, Zakhar Cordovin studied art in Leningrad, spent a few years in Stockholm, and now lectures on art at the University of Jerusalem. He roams all over
Europe in pursuit of obscure art works that he will restore and sell for lavish sums of money, attributing them to the greatest masters of the past.

　　During one of his European trips, Cordovin spots an old painting that he immediately identifies as belonging to one of El Greco’s pupils. The troubling resemblance of the artist’s name – Zacarias Cordovera – with his own, fascinates Cordovin. But he is also haunted by the image of a saint depicted in the portrait, and in certain details revealed during the restoration. The brilliantly concocted forgery scheme culminates in the multimillion-dollar sale of “a previously unknown El Greco painting” to the Vatican. Yet Cordovin sets off on his own personal investigation of the true story of the painting, a journey that eventually takes him to Córdoba, where he comes face to face with his family’s tragic past. The sweeping chase after the phantoms and mysteries of his family history intertwines with a crime story from Cordovin’s student years in Leningrad. Back then, his involvement in the art-crime scene resulted in the brutal murder of a close friend of his, challenging him years later with the no-option choice to avenge the murder.

　　It is in Córdoba that Zakhar Cordovin pulls all the strands into one deadly knot and hits upon the only solution to recoup the tragic mistakes and betrayals he had once committed.

　　Dina Rubina composes a breathtaking story set against the international shadow world of art forgers, art dealers, and big money deals. With a sure hand, she draws a vivid panorama of countries, landscapes, and art, and the effect is mesmerizing: readers will fall in love with this finely concocted and reproduced world, and with the text itself. The novel is peopled with a broad cast of authentic characters – immigrants, provincials, weirdos and straightforward lunatics, intellectuals, art experts, poets, criminals of various ranks and sorts, art dealers, and artists – in which there is no chance appearance. Each character has a unique voice that tells a singular story – be it Cordovin’s whimsical aunt Zhuka in Leningrad; the grouchy uncle Sema in Ukrainian Vinnitsa; Margo, his uproarious partner in the art-scam world; or his dearest childhood friend, Andryusha, unwitting victim of Cordovin’s art crime… Dina Rubina’s prose is strong and unsentimental, but full of genuine sympathy towards her characters – and, underlying it all, love.

Dina Rubina

　　Dina Rubina is an Israeli Russian-language writer. Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1953, Dina
Rubina had her first stories published in 1970s in Yunost (Youth) magazine. She has received numerous awards, and is the bestselling author of over 40 titles, including eight novels. Dina Rubina’s novels and novellas have been made into films, adapted for TV, and staged in theaters in Russia and Israel. Dina Rubina is the Big Book Award winner (2007) for the novel On the Sunny Side of the Street and the Russian Prize finalist for the novel the White Dove of Cordoba. the total print run of the novel the White Dove of Cordoba is 180,000 copies to date. Each new title by Dina Rubina is published in a first edition of 80,000 copies. Since 1990 Dina Rubina has lived in Ma’ale-Adumim, Israel with her family, artist Boris Karafelov, her daughter, and grandchildren.