The fate of the novel “The Desecration of a Beautiful Country” in the USSR was ambiguous. Unlike translations of other classic works that were reprinted many times, this book appeared in the early 1960s... and then disappeared on the distant shelves of library repositories for many decades. But why did this happen? What made vigilant Soviet censors see political sedition in the seemingly innocent story of the coming of age of a Welsh boy, whose youth fell on the turbulent beginning of the 19th century for Great Britain? This small masterpiece of English prose, reminiscent of the best novels of Dickens, is published for the first time in Russian without censorship cuts.< /p>