Annotation: “This is a novel about illusions, ideals and despair; this is a chivalrous novel, but chivalrous in the Cervantesque sense of the word”. This is how Andrei Ivanov describes his new book, as an author whose prose opens up the world of Russian emigration to us in a new way. His novel reveals the everyday life of Russian-speaking Estonians who find themselves in a dreamlike space between two countries and times: a heroic, countercultural past and a difficult to comprehend present. The endless string of dangerous adventures and events in which the author involves his heroes transforms the novel into a kind of wide literary panorama that is reminiscent of Bruegel's sweeping canvases.

Andrei Ivanov is a Russian writer, resident of Estonia, and recipient of the Russian Prize (2011) NoS (2013) awards for literature. Ivanov has been shortlisted for the Russian Booker prize twice.

“Andrei Ivanov's novel has many merits. Above all, there is the distinctive tone of the narrator, which evokes the unconditional trust required for travel to the darkest and most unsightly corners of the human soul. The author has a way of suprising the reader with his unexpected and bold transitions through the multilayered aesthetics of the Estonian underground, whose inhabitants bear the burden of Soviet traumas and, at the same time, feel the crisis of the European civilizing mission”.

-Nikolai Podosokorsky, literary critic