"If one stopped to consider the vast network of coincidences that make up a life, he thinks, taking a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, it would be enough to drive one mad." The Artist waits, and smokes, and dread builds. Alex Preston takes us behind the public facade of dictatorship and reveals a world of corruption, misadventure and compromise - and does it with all the clarity and precision of a portrait on a banknote...