Perestroika, also called Paras, is a chestnut racehorse who knows no life except racing. Her two names signify her two lives, the formal one, in which she belongs to and races for humans, and her own inner life explored by the novel. Paras is the novel’s protagonist and serves as one point-of-view through which readers engage with Smiley’s portrayal of Paris. Because the novel focuses on Paras’s experiences in Paris, she becomes one of the primary vehicles for the morals and messages the author conveys through the novel’s plot. The author presents Paras’s thoughts and feelings, but when the reader is in Paras’s mind, Smiley only gives access to what Paras knows and feels. This makes Paras a third-person limited POV narrator.

Paras lives a sheltered life in her barn stall, where her trainer, Delphine, and owner, Madeline, give her a diet made to keep her in racing shape. When she leaves her stall, she does not know the outside world: She has money but does not know what to do with it or what it is used for. Frida describes her as sheltered and naive because she ventures into the world but does not understand how the world works.