At the heart of Leonid Yuzefovich’s new adventure novel, a famous prose writer and historian, laureate of the “National Bestseller” prize, lies the myth of an eternal war between cranes and dwarfs, who “fight each other through people—not like animals, but to the death.”
Reflecting each other like mirrors, the book unfolds the fates of four impostors: a young Mongol living here and now; a forty-year-old geologist from the Moscow of perestroika; an adventurer from the time of the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century; and the next “miraculously survived” heir—Tsarevich Alexei—who appeared in Transbaikalia during the Civil War.
With the novel “Cranes and Dwarfs,” Leonid Yuzefovich became the main laureate of the national literary prize “The Big Book” for 2009. According to Yuzefovich, his first version of “Cranes and Dwarfs” was written in 1993. The book in this version was released six years ago. In 1993, the main action of the novel takes place.