Philhellene

Leonid Yuzefovich “Filellin” is a new fast-paced historical novel from a winner of the “Big Book” and “National Bestseller” awards.

The main character is the retired штабс-captain Grigory MostsepAnov—a regular teacher at a mountain school in the Urals. But one day he understands how he can help Emperor Alexander I with matters of state. And this concerns not only Russia! As a result of an ordinary man colliding with the state machine, the hero’s personal Odyssey begins—stretching from the Nizhny Tagil factories to the Greek Acropolis.

In this story, as if in a magical temporal kaleidoscope, we see Alexander I’s walks around the Tsar’s Village, his long journey across Russia, the last days in Taganrog, his stay in Crimea, and correspondence with Baroness Yulia Creedner; and we also witness the desperate struggle of the Greeks for their independence and of all those who sympathize with them—the filellins.

Letters, conversations, diaries—different voices blend into a single chorus of history, addressed from the nineteenth century to us in the twenty-first. The important thing is to hear this chorus.

“More historically reliable than it may seem to the reader. Of course, the diaries and letters included here—not to mention the imagined conversations of some characters with others—are the product of fiction, but some of the authors of these diaries and letters, and many of those who appear in them, are real figures, acting under their own names or having prototypes.” — Leonid Yuzefovich