One of the best novels by Valentin Pikul, a book that Valentin Pikul himself called “the main success in my literary biography.” A tale about the life and death of one of the most ambiguous figures in Russian history—the “holy devil” Grigory Rasputin—grows under Pikul’s pen into a large-scale and gripping narrative about the most paradoxical period for our country, perhaps: the brief pause between the February and October revolutions.
For the novel “The Unclean Power,” Valentin Pikul became (posthumously) the first laureate of the M. A. Sholokhov Prize. Valentin Savvich spent more than ten years working toward this novel. How much material was processed! Not counting newspaper and magazine notes that he reviewed—MANY HUNDREDS—his list of processed literature included 128 titles…