Bluebeard

Before you is a fictional autobiography of the American artist Rabo Karabekyan. He is seventy-one, a widower, and lives alone in a luxurious house on Long Island. Once Rabo meets a woman on the ocean shore and, unexpectedly for himself, invites her to his estate.

The guest - the indomitable Tsirceya Berman, the author of super popular novels - fundamentally changes Karabekyan's life. She forces the eccentric artist to write an autobiography, and he cannot resist. And so Rabo recalls his parents - Armenian immigrants who escaped during the first genocide in the 20th century; his years studying painting in New York, his first love, and his service in the army during World War II; German captivity and the dark twilight of Nazism in Europe; returning from the war, an unhappy marriage, a career as an artist and friendship with artists of the New York school of abstract expressionism.

Meanwhile, Circe is eager to find out what Rabo hides under the secure locks in the potato storehouse: a secret that baffles art critics and collectors all over the world...

"Bluebeard" is a vivid example of Vonnegut's unparalleled skill as a storyteller: terrible scenes of crimes against humanity are interwoven with comic and grotesque episodes, the bitterness of disappointment alternates with encouraging faith in the triumph of good, and wise irony emphasizes deep compassion.