The Label of the Great Khan

16 hrs. 57 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Mikhail Karateev

Narrator Larisa Yurova

In 1958, in Buenos Aires, a historical novel titled “Label of the Great Khan” was published in a run of a thousand copies using the author’s own funds—an author who was not known in the literary world. The novel tells about the brutal internecine conflicts of Russian princes during the time of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, whose victim was the young prince Vasily Karachевский. However, only a few readers—mainly fellow countrymen—might have remembered that Karateev had already been published as a writer of essays and had released documentary books about the fate of Russian emigrants in the Balkans and South America.

Argentina (let’s note, like the entire subcontinent) was considered—and probably not without reason—a cultural backwater of Russian emigration. Yet as a result of the Second World War, at least outside the wave of repeated emigration—from China and the Balkans (with centers in Harbin and Belgrade)—a great spread occurred, from Australia to South America, while the literary capitals still remained Russian Paris (though considerably weakened) and Russian New York (to a large extent strengthened because of it).

That is why it was surprising to see M. Karateev’s novel appear in distant Buenos Aires, drawing enthusiastic responses from critics and readers in those Russian diasporas where it could reach, despite the modest print run...

The first novel “Label of the Great Khan” tells the story of Prince Vasily of Karachev: as a result of an agreement among relatives-princes, he loses his principality—“the label of the Great Khan” is given to another prince. Vasily goes to the Horde to restore justice.

1. The Label of the Great Khan