The book is a novella about a man of remarkable, tragic fate—one of the first Russian orientalists, Ivan Vitkevich. A story about a person whom the highest officials of Tsarist Russia considered a state criminal; about the agents of the London Intelligence Service who saw him as a brilliant Russian spy; about the wise Humboldt and the genius Pushkin—remarkable scholars. And the people of Kara-Kum and the snowy Hindukush knew that Vitkevich was a man of sharp eyesight, great intellect, and a good heart.