Herman Melville's first major novel appears in Russian translation for the first time since 1849. This is a combination of pamphlet and melodrama, ethnicity and esotericism, psychology and memoirs, detective and travel writing, philosophy and poetry, woven into the historical outline of the mid-19th century. The main character finds himself in a metaphorical world that reflects the appearance of the countries of the Old and New Worlds in the mirror of the societies of conventional Oceania , where each island has its own prototype or social model. For a wide range of readers.