★The book won 2016 Russian Booker Prize!
★The original Russian book has sold over 15,000 copies!
★Rights sold to France, Macedonia, Arabia, Mongolia and other countries!
★A tragic historical novel that took 6 years to write!
★The author treats literature with patience and meditation. He studied the history of the Golden Horde, experimented with various endings, and finally settled on the original idea. "This historical novel is very vivid and presents the rare hero with character" ——said the jury of the Russian Booker Prize.
★English translation samples can be provided.

　　The book tells the story of Ivan Maltsov's complex and unfortunate fate and encounter in his struggle against greed, shame and ignorance. With the sacrifice of Ivan Maltsov, the writer hopes to awaken people's conscience, arouse people's treasure of history and human cultural heritage, let people understand how history and archaeology have been turned into commerce, and become the means used by some people to seek personal gains, and let people timely reflect on themselves in the mire of money and material. He hoped that people could have a better understanding of reality and face the dilemma in reality through understanding history and the reflecting on history, to approach the truth constantly.

　　The book also shows the natural beauty in northern Russia. The work shows us the colors of the sky and wind in the four seasons of the year, such as wild geese, first snow, torrential rain, and so on. The scenes of rural life and the magnificent images of nature depicted in it are unparalleled in the contemporary literature.
　　The novel is set in the centuries-old town of Derevsk, in the Novgorod region—the heart of European Russia. The town’s historical center boasts a range of medieval constructions, including a 12th century monastery and a 15th century citadel. The latter has become an unsolved riddle for local scientists, an expensive investment lot for competing property developers, and a never- ending inspiration of local lore. The citizens believe that there are secret underground pathways connecting the monastery with the citadel, and also serving as a hideaway for the town’s gold, buried there during the time of the devastating raids of the Tatars.

　　Ivan Maltsov has been the head of a local archaeological research unit for 25 years. An honest, forthright, and highly principled (even recklessly so) man, Maltsov openly challenges the director of a local museum. As a result, Maltsov loses his job—his only income, and the entire source of meaning and passion of his existence. What’s more, Maltsov’s wife leaves him for Kalyuzhny, her husband’s former student, and the owner of a competing excavation company. Maltsov has always despised Kalyuzhny for his methods, which betrayed Maltsov’s ideas of the true nature of archeology as a science: Kalyuzhny’s company would issue unscrupulous reports and provide services for property developers, ignoring the real cultural value of historical buildings.

　　When Maltsov’s wife leaves, she admits to him that, after many years of trying to conceive, she is pregnant. Betrayed and heartbroken, Maltsov escapes to the old family dacha in a now decaying village. There he decides to complete his research on the Golden Horde in the 14th century. However, the much-desired idyllic rural solitude eludes him. Maltsov is unable to avoid tussles with the local drunkards; he continues to receive disturbing news about the plans of the authorities to reconstruct the Citadel and build a hotel on the spot; and Maltsov’s wife is said to be openly living with Kalyuzhny in their flat. As the villagers steadily drink away their squalid and miserable lives, Maltsov becomes an unwitting unwitting witness of, and participant in, local conflicts and dramas. When the conniving and cruel moonshiner, who bears a grudge against Maltsov, casually kills his puppy, Maltsov knows: he has to leave, and the village casts him out.

　　The meager, inhospitable life in the decaying village is completely at odds with Maltsov’s visual dreams: buoyant with color, rich with scents, dense with action. In these dreams, Maltsov follows the dramatic life of the protagonist of his research work, who is allegedly a family forebear—the notorious khan Mamai’s emir and army chief, Tugan-Shona. Maltsov follows Tugan-Shona’s actions at the Battle of Kulikovo against the Russians, the Mongols’ defeat, and the treacherous assassination of Mamai by a competing ruler of the Horde. Left without his suzerain, Tugan-Shona refuses to accept the authority of the new khan and fl ees to Samarqand, the center of the Great Emir Timur’s empire, in a dangerous and deadly trip though the desert. Just like his descendent Maltsov, Tugan-Shona gets involuntarily drawn into intrigues at the court and has to fl ee again as an outcast, loyal to his own principles of honor and courage—this time, to Russia.

　　These strange visions open up a clue to Maltsov about a true nature of the town’s Citadel. He returns to the excavation site with hopes of a true scientific discovery, prepared to fi ght for the Citadel’s status as a historical site against the plans of the state authorities and local businessmen. What he does not yet know is that this campaign will become his last.

　　The astounding beauty of Russian nature; the shock from his encounter with true life in Russia’s oppressive and dreary provinces; the epic and breathtaking scenes of medieval battles; the brusque social satire of moderns morals—the Citadel is a spectacular literary achievement from an established man of letters, and a source of precious inspiration in a time marked by the death of culture and a pervasive negligence and apathy.

Pyotr Aleshkovsky　(1957)

Russian Booker Prize winning writer, historian and journalist.

His historical novel , was shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize; was also shortlisted for the 2006 Russian Booker Prize and in the long list for the Big Book Award. With three times shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize, finally his outstanding work bring this prize with great honor to him in 2016 .

Aleshkovsky never hoped to become a popular literary writer, preferring to make his works into tragic historical novels, because in his opinion: to construct works as tragedies and history requires deep understanding of them, living with them and trusting their breath. If you are in tune with them, you will always be attracted to them. Aleshkovsky believes that true art is a special approach to truth, a search for beauty, a aftertaste that compels people to think and to live with them.

　　Pyotr Aleshkovsky graduated from Moscow State University and worked for several years　as an archeologist preserving the centuries-old monasteries in the North of Russia, before turning
to literature. As a TV- and radio- journalist Pyotr Aleshkovsky runs his shows on modern literature.Aleshkovsky is the author of a dozen of books of prose. His novels “Skunk: A life” (2011) and “Fish,a History of One Migration” (2006) were shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize and translatedinto several European languages, including English, French and German.