A Northern Tale

Living almost without contact with the outside world, high in the mountains, in an isolated observatory, an international team of astronomers—and not right away—discovers that a nightmare of a civil war has come to the country that sheltered them. The shared history connects the fates of representatives of three generations of men and women— a Decembrist and the daughter of the keeper of an old lighthouse, a young naval officer of the Russian Empire, and an elderly married couple, an artist and a charming Finnish girl… In search of the missing diary, a silent journalist, an energetic captain, and a writer with a strong spirit travel across the Caucasus and the Black Sea and end up in a tangled, thrilling adventure story… “A Constellation of Hounds,” “A Northern Tale,” and “Glistening Clouds” are three Paustovsky novellas, very different stylistically, but equally marked by an astonishing sense of the word and vivid imagery from one of the most talented Russian writers of the twentieth century.