“The hero of the novel, Kirill, enters a new world where he is confronted with shocking knowledge. It’s almost as if alongside the laws of physics there is also the enigmatic force of history, the gravitation of the living past … Lebedev strives to give expression to the unspeakable, to write about the violence, the war and the terror of Russia’s recent past. Lebedev tells the story in lush and melancholy verbal imagery.”

Wiener Zeitung