★ The debts owed by history must be repaid by future generations, with interest, through their own lives.
★ An epic tale told with a master’s pen!
A family epic and a personal coming-of-age saga spanning more than half a century! Beginning with the trauma of the devastation of World War II, the novel explores how secrets are passed down, how talent is shaped, and how the weight of history crashes into the turbulent emotional lives of young people today—giving rise to a gripping story of love, betrayal, friendship, and redemption. Renowned Russian-Jewish author Zinaida Rubina, a living classic of contemporary literature, uses cinematic, sensory prose—capturing sound, color, taste, and touch—to craft a multigenerational symphony of fate that stretches from World War II and the Soviet era to the present day.
★ For months, this book has been among the top 10 bestsellers in Moscow’s leading bookstores!
- No. 1 on the monthly modern fiction list
- No. 1 on the overall bestseller list
- No. 2 on the weekly top-ten books list
- No. 2 on the monthly new releases list
- No. 2 on the monthly fiction list
- No. 3 on the monthly list of the top 100 books
★ A powerful premise with high-concept suspense!
The story revolves around a legendary collection of 387 rare timepieces, a historical mystery codenamed “The Elegant Robbery,” and the protagonist “the Designer’s” extraordinary gift for constructing intricate secret spaces. Blending elements of history, crime, art, and adventure, the narrative is driven by suspense and brimming with gripping plot twists.
★ Exquisitely captivating characters and relationships!
- In the first installment, “The Boys,” the core of the story centers on two gifted yet deeply wounded men: the enigmatic master watchmaker Caesar and his brilliant protégé Zhorka, whose mentor–apprentice bond transcends age.
- In the second installment, “The Silver Mine,” the focus shifts to the detonation of inheritance and the emotional cataclysm that ensues: the brotherly friendship between Zhorka and Agasha, and the fiery, deadly love triangle they share with Lydia.
- The final chapter of the trilogy is on the horizon, and the entire story will be narrated by Lydia herself, unveiling entirely new dimensions and adding yet another raw, tormented voice to the narrative.
★ A work that appeals to a wide range of readers! It is both a serious family epic and a psychologically profound novel that literary enthusiasts crave, as well as a suspenseful, adventurous tale full of secrets, chases, and dangerous relationships—making it a compelling read for fans of plot-driven stories while retaining broad appeal across diverse audiences.

“Silver Mine” picks up right where the first book left off, shifting to the protagonists’ adult years. The pace quickens, emotional intensity surges, and the story weaves together themes of friendship, love, legacy, and betrayal into a passionate, high-stakes, cross-border adventure saga.

Zhorik (now commonly known as Georgy/George) and Agasha have graduated from an elite school in Astrakhan and are now living through the “wild 1990s” following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Agasha has followed in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor, while Zhorik’s genius is fully blossoming: he possesses a photographic memory and an astonishing ability to learn languages, enabling him to adapt swiftly to any environment. Although he attends university, what truly defines him is his unparalleled talent for “spatial design”—the ability to plan and construct incredibly complex, concealed, and secure “hideouts.” Riding the wave of economic chaos, Zhorik and Agasha join forces to carry out a series of shrewd, clandestine business ventures, amassing a vast fortune that is carefully hidden in various “secret spaces” designed by Zhorik. Their friendship remains strong, but their life paths have diverged.

Caesar has passed away, leaving behind two heirs: Zhorik, whom he treated as his own son, and Lydia, the daughter of his old friend Gennady—known as “Diogenes”—whom he met early in his life in Bukhara. The inheritance at stake is the family’s legendary collection of clocks, which has survived countless trials and tribulations and now returns to Caesar’s possession. This legacy binds the fates of the two heirs inextricably—and unleashes a devastating emotional storm.

Lydia is an unconventional, brilliant tattoo artist, a “Greek girl from Bukhara,” whose body is covered in dazzling, intricate tattoos reminiscent of Harlequin’s costume. Her father, the mural painter Diogenes Posidis, is himself a deeply individualistic figure: drawing on Homer’s Odyssey, he taught his daughter to observe the colors of the world around her, to listen to its stories, and to capture its smells and sounds. From an early age, Lydia absorbed everything. The freedom she experienced both internally and externally gave rise to an extraordinary personality: she disregards others’ opinions, easily gives free rein to fantastical imaginings, and refines these visions into “fairy tales”—wild, terrifying, yet deeply poetic.

When Lydia was thirteen, her father died of an incurable illness. At that moment, a familiar figure from the first book of the trilogy appears at her doorstep: it is Caesar. He has come to Bukhara to hide a batch of unique wristwatches he stole from the legendary watchmaker Abraham Prague. After her father’s death, in an attempt to fill the void left by his absence, Lydia made a wish at a “sacred spring” near a silver mine not far from Bukhara: “Grant me the most… terrifying and immense love!” Like a spell, her wish is fulfilled. Hidden in an abandoned silver mine in the mountains lies a secret: a cache of stolen antique watches.

Zhorik and Agasha travel together to Bukhara to settle the inheritance, and almost simultaneously they fall hopelessly in love with Lydia—a mysterious, fiery, and artistic young woman. Lydia herself becomes entangled in this emotional vortex, giving rise to a fierce and painful love triangle. Their lives begin to revolve around Lydia, turning into a drama of pursuit and flight that spans multiple countries and cities: “The one who is with Lydia is always on the run; the other is always chasing and trying to tear them apart.” Meanwhile, Lydia, this “beautiful lady,” to some extent manipulates the situation, ensuring that her two “knights” fight for her under “fair” conditions. Whoever wins Lydia seems to come closer to gaining full ownership and legitimacy over the historical legacy—both material and spiritual. What once were close, inseparable partners have turned into enemies locked in a global struggle of pursuit, betrayal, and mutual torment.

The entanglement of love and the secrets of the inheritance are inextricably linked. Back in the day, the masterful Caesar Adamovich safely hid the stolen watches in an abandoned silver mine in the mountains—a place steeped in legend and fraught with real danger—and the mine itself became a source of immense temptation and peril. The “secret cache in the silver mine” serves as a key geographical and psychological coordinate driving the plot forward. Zhorik’s genius for designing hiding places, Agasha’s medical background and cool-headedness, and Lydia’s artistic network and rebellious spirit are all drawn into an international conspiracy and adventure triggered by the inheritance. They move back and forth between Bukhara in Central Asia, Russia, and even farther into the Western world, racing against time, maneuvering around shadowy forces lurking in the dark, and at the same time grappling with the intense emotional conflicts arising from love and betrayal among themselves.

“Silver Mine” is a profoundly moving, deeply insightful, and masterfully narrated work, marking one of the peaks of Dina Rubina’s creative career. At the heart of the novel is Lydia’s coming-of-age story: she grows up in an atmosphere rich in love, creativity, and inner freedom. Lydia is an extraordinary character, rare in modern literature: at once fragile yet resilient, intelligent yet dangerous, innocent yet deadly. The title “Silver Mine” is a double entendre: it may refer to the ultimate secret treasure left by Caesar, still waiting to be revealed, but more directly it symbolizes Lydia herself—a dangerously alluring emotional mine that can crush anyone who dares to mine it. The bomb buried in history, ignited by love and desire, ultimately blows to smithereens everything they have painstakingly built.

In the second installment, “Silver Mine,” the boundaries of friendship are tested, the destructive yet creative power of love is explored, the cost of inheritance is examined, and the themes of identity and exile are further developed. The narrative brims with Rubina’s signature lush sensory descriptions and suspenseful tension, seamlessly blending the characters’ inner storms with their external adventures. The story leaves readers hanging at a critical juncture—when the love triangle has reached fever pitch, the secrets are about to erupt in full, and the characters’ fates hang precariously on the edge of the unknown—strongly hinting at the arrival of the final chapter of the trilogy: How will the protagonists resolve the conflict sparked by the inheritance, love, and past sins? Where will their friendship and their lives ultimately lead?

[Author] Dina Rubina
A contemporary prose writer and bestselling novelist, Dina Rubina has repeatedly won or been shortlisted for major literary awards, making her one of Russia’s most distinguished and deserving writers.
Born in the Soviet Union (in Tashkent), she later emigrated to Israel. Her works are widely read across the global Russian-speaking community—among Russian, Israeli, and diaspora readers in Europe and the United States—and have earned her a reputation as one of the leading figures of “Russian-language world literature.” Her writing transcends the confines of any single nation-state, focusing on themes of diaspora, identity, and cultural hybridity. Her novels combine the readability of bestsellers—rich plots and intense emotional tension—with profound philosophical reflections and cultural metaphors, successfully bridging the gap between mass-market readership and literary criticism. With a keen eye for detail, she portrays the spiritual dislocation of post-Soviet Jewish immigrants, exploring how concepts such as “homeland,” “memory,” and “language” are being reimagined in the age of globalization. Her seminal works, “The Russian Canaan” and “The Madman Gurevich,” both revolve around these central themes. Rubina excels at embedding individual destinies within the broader sweep of history—such as the collapse of the Soviet Union or the history of the Jewish people—yet she steers clear of empty grand narratives, instead centering on the emotional traumas and survival wisdom of ordinary people. Her protagonists are often wise and resilient women, while her works also delve deeply into the moral dilemmas and artistic quests of intellectuals amid profound societal upheaval. The psychological depth and social insight of her writing evoke the works of Chekhov and Bulgakov, while her compassionate portrayal of “little people” struggling in the crucible of history carries forward the tradition of Dostoevsky’s compassion.

In her early years, Dina Rubina’s youthful works were published in the magazine “Youth.” She lived and worked in Moscow before settling in Israel in 1990. After moving to Israel, she served as a literary editor for the “Friday” supplement, the literary weekly of the Russian-language newspaper “Our Country.” During this period, her works began to appear in leading Russian literary journals such as “Novy Mir,” “Znamya,” and “Druzhba Narodov.” In 1978, she joined the Writers’ Union of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, and in 1979 she became a member of the Writers’ Union of the Soviet Union. She is also a member of International PEN Club and the Association of Russian-Speaking Writers in Israel (since 1990). She has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Prize of the Ministry of Culture of Uzbekistan, the Arye Dvorkin Prize (Israel), the Prize of the Israeli Writers Association, and the Oleg Tabakov Charitable Foundation Prize.

Since the 1970s, when she began her literary career, Dina Rubina has published more than a dozen full-length novels and nearly thirty collections of short and medium-length stories. Her work “Da Vinci’s Handwriting” won the Ronghu “Portal” Award for Best Long Science Fiction Novel. In 2007, her novel “On the Sunlit Street” was awarded the Big Book Prize. Her bestselling novel “The Puppet Syndrome” was adapted into a film and won an award at the Second Silk Road International Film Festival. In 2015, her trilogy “The Russian Canary” and in 2020 her trilogy “Napoleon’s Train” were both shortlisted for the Big Book Prize. In addition, her works have been translated into multiple languages and published internationally, earning her the Israeli Writers Association Prize (1995) and the French Book of the Year Award (1996). Several of her works have also been adapted for film and television. To date, her books have sold more than 8,000,000 copies!

“My profession is that of a writer. I see the entire vast world as a treasure trove woven from countless plots and stories.” — Dina Rubina