The Island of the Sleeping Woman

April 1937. Miguel Hordan Quiraziás, a merchant sailor who made his choice in the Spanish Civil War, unexpectedly receives a dangerous assignment: to lead a motley band of mercenaries—essentially pirates—and carry out sabotage against Soviet transports sailing through the Aegean Sea with weapons for the Republicans. Having reached a base on the tiny island of the Sleeping Woman, Hordan meets the island’s owners—Baron Katelós and his wife Leda, a dazzling woman of mature years who, in ice-cold despair, tries to break free from the trap of her own fate. And while gunfights thunder at sea and feelings ignite on land, far from the island, in Istanbul, two friends who have ended up on opposite sides of the front conduct their own chess game—and it is inexorably heading toward a bloody endgame…

Arturo Pérez-Reverte is a former war correspondent, the acclaimed author of the Captain Diego Alatriste series, the winner of major literary awards, and the creator of vivid historical, military, adventure, and detective novels translated into forty languages and sold in editions of over 27 million copies. “The Island of the Sleeping Woman” is a story about war, duty, retribution, and love—a sea story where the only reliable things are those that have been tested: friendship, loyalty, hard work, danger. Love at sea is a mirage: it happens, but you can’t trust it.

First time in Russian!