In the following extract, set in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, Nureyev has moved away from his impoverished home in Ufa to study dance in Leningrad under the great teacher Pushkin. He spends his time devouring literature and taking walks with his girlfriend RosaMaria. With his long hair, lithe figure and unruly talent he stands out. Rumour has it that he has seduced Pushkin’s wife, the elegant blonde, Xenia. It doesn’t seem to curb his progress: in 1959 he is invited to dance for Khrushchev and has won a place as a soloist with the famous Kirov Ballet.

Everywhere in New York, it seems, there are people hungry to reveal their most extraordinary moments to anyone who will listen. Whether it's the lift operator on the subway or the beggars hitting you up for spare change or the waitress in your coffee shop, everyone here has a story. No wonder, then, that a Dublin writer with a drawerful of literary prizes in an era when to be Irish is deeply cool would choose to make his home here. Colum McCann is the Irish author of Fishing the Sloe Black River, This Side of Brightness and Everything in this Country Must whose latest novel Dancer, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £12.99) is based on the life of a quintessential New Yorker – the emigré Soviet dancer, Rudolf Nureyev.