This book is at once a thriller, a hard-edged detective story, and a gothic horror novel; it is also a harsh pamphlet and an autobiography. But regardless of how you define its genre, this is a story about resilience, fidelity to convictions, relationships, and one’s calling. And these concepts are eternal, whoever the subject may be. In this case, the heroes are the author Alexey Malobrodskiy and those who—by no fault of their own fate—became accomplices in his “resistance”: Kirill Serebrennikov, Yuri Itin, Sofya Apelbaum, and Nina Maslyaeva, who found herself practically on the other side of the barricades.