Meet Maxim Arturovich Pyatnitsky, also known as “Pyat”. A Tsarist rebel, a Nazi robber, a swindler wanted on all continents and a reactionary counterintelligence agent is the dark and dangerous anti-hero of Michael Moorcock's most controversial work. The novel, the first in the Quartet of Five, was first published in 1981 to critical acclaim before falling into oblivion and remaining unavailable in the States for 30 years. Byzantium Lives is not a book for everyone, the story of a cocaine addict obsessed with sex and anti-Semitism, and his journey from Leningrad to London, during which many scoundrels and heroes enter the scene, including Trotsky and Makhno. The protagonist's career precisely mirrors humanity's 20th-century descent into fascism and world war. This is Moorcock at his damning, godless glory: a powerful, sweeping survey of the events of the last century, based on the diaries of modern literature's most heinous criminal. This edition of the novel is given in the author's edition and contains previously prohibited episodes and scenes.