[1] Dessaix was educated at North Sydney Boys High School and the Australian National University (ANU).
During this time he translated a number of Russian books into English in collaboration with Michael Ullman, including The Sheepskin Coat and An Absolutely Happy Village by Boris Vakhtin.
[2] The manuscript was written in French, and the book concerns his journey to an alternative sexuality after twelve years of marriage and his meeting with his birth mother Yvonne.
He never met his birth father, who was killed in an air crash shortly after the end of World War II.
It takes inspiration from his doctoral thesis on Turgenev and the Soviet Union, as well as Alain de Botton's works on travel, art and philosophy.