“...the gates of the “stone maples” were locked, and there were no stones or maples around - only burnt blackberry lashes on a wall made of uneven pieces of sandstone, harsh Roman masonry: no fire is scary for such a house... "inn sleepy" - was engraved on a copper plate, under it hung another, larger one, made of tin: "be careful, there are evil dogs in the yard", on the bottom plate someone wrote in fine detail with a red felt-tip pen: "and evil snakes."

Lena Eltang’s debut novel “Escape of the Kumanika” was included in the short list of the Andrei Bely Prize and the “National Bestseller”, and critics called it “the best Russian novel of recent years.” The new book is a masterly detective game, to the delight of connoisseurs of fine literature. The mystery of the witch's boarding house, the breath of the Irish Bay, the bizarre legends of Wales, the story of a love that goes from passion to hatred, the mystery of death, which may not have happened - this is a deception book, the heroes of which so skillfully change masks and confuse their tracks, that unraveling the mystery of the past is no less important for them than understanding the meaning of the present...

Attention! The author's spelling and punctuation have been preserved!