Boris Sadovsky's novel is over, but a strong and unusual impression will probably haunt his reader for a long time. He came into contact with the prose of an extraordinary master. Neither the social cataclysms that destroyed everything that was dear to the author of “Wheat and Tares,” nor a long-term serious illness, nor age, nor a disastrous life took away his gift of storytelling. And he did not accept any of the demands that the ideological policy of the authorities, which had already clearly defined in 1936–1941, made to the writers. During the years of Stalin’s dictatorship and mass repressions, he wrote a work that was openly monarchical and clerical, “counter-revolutionary” in the fullest and most precise meaning of the word. In Boris Sadovskoy placed the figure of Lermontov at the center of his work.