Nothing changes from a change of scenery or cast of characters. The world is beautiful in itself and life is unique, but human existence—with its play of passions and primitive struggle of ambitions, its dance of coincidences—has no meaning. And Derzhavin is right: “Our life is a certain ball hanging by a thin hair.”
So should we fuss? This thought comes to the great emperor on a remote island, and the idea begins to come to the main character of this series of novels, Yuly Shtaal—swept up by the whirl of life and carried off, no one knows where, and no one knows why...
The novel “The Ninth Thermidor” is devoted to the overthrow of the Jacobin dictatorship and the death of its leader Maximilien Robespierre in 1801. The author found an elegant explanation for the riddle of the French dictator’s death.