This novel was written more than half a century ago about events that are now nearly a hundred years old—namely, the Russian Revolution and the formation of the young Turkish Republic.
Yet, while reading this tragic book full of love and passion, you understand that the writer’s greatness lies in speaking of the timeless when describing historical events. And that grand political cataclysms—in Russia or in Turkey, at the beginning of the 20th or 21st century—can only be understood as part of the great, shared history of peoples. A story in which every human fate sounds its own melody—full of pain and joy—just as happens in the novels of Nazım Hikmet, the greatest Turkish writer, whose work, without a doubt, belongs to the golden treasury of world culture.