A complex novel by little-known Soviet writer Oleg Borisovich Merkulov tells about the participation of infantryman Andrey Novgorodtsev in the liberation of Ukraine from the German-Fascist invaders during the Great Patriotic War. The novel’s events take place from August 1943 to July 1944 and are marked by detailed descriptions of even the smallest particulars of the war that has passed.
Despite the fact that the novel is saturated, mainly, with military episodes, it is still written about love.
The third part of the novel, “A Lone Fighter,” is essentially one of the first works of the many modern pieces of literature about soldiers “who get transported” into wartime—so-called “popadanets.”