The Balkans have always been and remain a mythological space incomprehensible to the European mind. Ancient civilization was born here, Greco-Slavic principalities and kingdoms rose and fell in the Middle Ages, Byzantium stood guard over Europe for a thousand years until it was swallowed up by the Ottoman avalanche. The idea of unifying the southern Slavs struggled for centuries here, on the outskirts of great empires, with the concepts of independent state development of each people. The main civilizational seams and fault lines of the Old World came together in the Balkans: Western and Eastern Christian rites opposed the Islamic one and tried to coexist with it; The Slavic world sought mutual understanding with the Turkic, Roman, Germanic, Albanian, and Hungarian. Russia has been defending its own interests in the Balkans for three centuries. In his new book, Andrei Shary, a famous writer and journalist, writes about old and young Balkan states, connected to each other by a common historical destiny, close cooperation and centuries-old experience of coexistence, but also divided, torn apart by eternal internecine contradictions. The publication is beautifully illustrated - reproductions of paintings, drawings, postcards and photographs provide an opportunity to see the Balkans, their inhabitants, life, heroes and anti-heroes through the eyes of contemporaries. The headings “Children of the Balkans” and “Balkan Stories” supplement the main text with little-known information, and the epigraphs to the chapters, without exaggeration, can be called a brief encyclopedia of world literature about the Balkans.