Vladimir Markovich Sanin (1928–1989) was an indefatigable traveler who visited the most inaccessible places on Earth—Arctic, Antarctica, and the equator—one of the last Soviet romantics, who sang praises to long-distance journeys and heroic professions. Most of his books are devoted to sailors and polar explorers, about whose lives the author knew first-hand. In the novel “The Great Fire,” real events were used as the basis— the fire at the hotel “Rossiya,” which happened in 1977— and for the first time in fiction, Sanin tells about this difficult profession.