Here is the complete version of Vasily Aksyonov’s much-discussed novel “A Mysterious Passion.” It is being published for the first time in the form the author gave it to us. The heroes of “A Mysterious Passion” are the idols of the sixties: Bulat Okudzhava, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Bella Akhmadulina, Vladimir Vysotsky, Andrey Voznesensky, Andrey Tarkovsky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Joseph Brodsky—and their opponents, irreconcilable enemies… Aksyonov gives us a unique opportunity to learn how these people lived, how they resisted authority, succumbed to it, loved, betrayed, stole other men’s wives, what they believed in, what they breathed. And all of it is driven by the mysterious passion that makes some great artists, and others—traitors and opportunists.