Tsar Darian

The early 1990s, Dushanbe. A young philologist, an employee of the Academy of Sciences, falls passionately in love with a girl from a Tajik patriarchal family— the daughter of not the last person in Tajikistan. A premonition of an impending civil war prompts her father to agree to the marriage, but with certain conditions. The happy newlyweds depart for Moscow, and the main hero, at the very last moment, receives an unexpected gift from his friend—a book, or rather, a manuscript about King Darian. Happiness doesn’t last long, and in the moment of deepest despair the hero remembers the gift. The story of the suffering king Darian and the story of the copyist Athanasius Patrine intertwine with the hero’s own story—three plot lines separated by centuries suddenly merge, turning into an astonishing polyphonic tapestry. “King Darian” is a novel about the fact that in all eras people experience the same feelings and dream of the same things. It’s a novel about despair and consolation, about searching and finding, about time that can truly heal.