A classic Russian novel: multi-layered, multi-faceted, densely populated, unfolding over a long period of time.
By the end of 1922, nearly 300,000 refugees arrived in Manchuria from war-torn Russia. Harbin—the city in the northeast of China—seemed like salvation. In reality, it was through Harbin that the front of the Russian Troubles stretched for a quarter of a century.
We know little about the Far East in general and about Harbin in the period between the Civil War and the Second World War. And there, events were unfolding in which the intelligence services of practically all the leading countries of the world took part.
The main character of the novel, an officer Baron von Adelberg, tries to return to the Chinese city that had become Russian for several decades—and finds himself caught between the “golden treasury” of the Russian Empire and the schemes of the Soviet and Japanese intelligence services.