★ The debts owed by history must be repaid by future generations, with interest, through their own lives.
★ An epic tale told in a masterful literary style!
A family epic and a personal coming-of-age saga that spans 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’s legacy 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 Heist,” 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.
- The second installment, “The Silver Mine,” delves into the detonation of inheritance and the emotional cataclysm that ensues—focusing on Zhorka and Agasha’s brotherly friendship, as well as their fiery, deadly love triangle with Lydia.
- The final chapter of the trilogy is on the horizon, and the entire story will be narrated by Lydia herself, unveiling an entirely new dimension 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, and a suspenseful adventure brimming with secrets, chases, and dangerous relationships—perfect for readers who love plot-driven stories. With its rich thematic depth and thrilling narrative, it resonates with a broad audience.

“Boys” is the opening installment of the “Designer Zhorka” trilogy, weaving two parallel yet ultimately converging destinies into a masterfully crafted narrative and setting the stage for a sweeping family epic that spans eras, geographies, and cultures.

**Destiny Line One: Itzik/Caesar’s Exile and Trauma**
The story begins in Warsaw, Poland, in 1939. Ten-year-old Jewish boy Itzik Straykhman grows up in a family of clockmakers whose craft has been passed down through generations. His home houses a collection of 387 clocks, each ticking at a different pace; carefully amassed by his father and grandfather, these timepieces are not only family treasures but also crystallizations of the art of timekeeping and precision engineering. Yet as Nazi Germany’s iron heel closes in, this tranquil world is shattered in an instant. Fleeing the impending persecution, Itzik’s family is forced to abandon everything and embark on a grueling journey eastward.

They first reach Astrakhan in the Soviet Union and eventually find temporary refuge in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. In this foreign land, Itzik adopts a more Slavic-sounding name, “Caesar,” in a desperate attempt to conceal his Jewish identity. Yet no matter where he is, his longing for the abandoned clock collection back in his Warsaw home never fades. This obsession drives him after the war to return to a Warsaw reduced to ruins, determined to recover the collection. But when the young man, now calling himself Caesar, returns to Warsaw, all he finds is a homeland obliterated by artillery fire—and the once-venerable collection vanished without a trace. This loss is not merely material; it represents the utter collapse of his spiritual world and his very sense of identity.

The crushing weight of loss and the hardships of postwar survival ultimately lead Caesar down a dangerous path: he plans and carries out a sensational theft—later dubbed the “Elegant Robbery” by newspapers—a daring heist in which he steals a collection of priceless wristwatches from a museum in Jerusalem. His goal is to reclaim the lost treasures that symbolize both his family’s heritage and his personal identity. Years later, Caesar, now a master watchmaker of unparalleled skill but living under an assumed identity as Stakhura, withdraws into solitary exile in a dilapidated leprosy sanatorium in Astrakhan, Soviet Union, where the children mockingly dub him “the Pole.”

**Destiny Line Two: Zhorka’s Childhood and His Encounter with Fate**
In the mid-20th century, in the salt marsh village of the Astrakhan region in the Soviet Union, eight-year-old Zhorka is left to fend for himself after his electrician father dies. Living with a mother trapped in alcoholism, he is forced to drop out of school to tend sheep, leading a solitary and precocious life. After his mother’s death, a kind teacher writes a letter persuading Zhorka’s childless aunt Tamara and uncle Vladimir in the city of Astrakhan to take him in. Though the new household is far from affluent, it opens up a whole new world to Zhorka. Gifted with an extraordinary mathematical mind and an almost obsessive fascination with numbers, structures, and hidden spaces, he becomes passionate about designing and building all kinds of “hideaways.”

In the courtyard of a house in Astrakhan, fate brings this lonely, eccentric boy together with another solitary figure: the elderly clockmaker known as “the Pole,” Caesar Adamovich Stakhura. An astonishing friendship, transcending age and background, blossoms between them. In Caesar’s half-burned apartment, cluttered with strange tools and spare parts, Caesar makes an exception and allows Zhorka to handle his precious instruments, sharing with him the secrets of watchmaking, the aesthetics of precision craftsmanship, and profound reflections on time, memory, and loss. For Zhorka, Caesar is not just a mentor; he is a window onto a world brimming with order, wisdom, and a mysterious past. At the same time, Zhorka forms a deep bond with Arkady (Agasha), a neighborhood boy from an intellectual family whose father works at the leprosy sanatorium.

With a master’s hand, Rubina gradually draws the two timelines closer together. Through flashbacks and interweaving narratives, the reader gradually learns about Itzik/Caesar’s tragic past: the family’s clockmaking legacy, their displacement during the war, their struggle for survival in Bukhara, and the secret behind the “Elegant Robbery” that changed his life forever. Meanwhile, in the present, Caesar is quietly passing on his knowledge, his obsessions, and perhaps even his unfinished plans to the remarkably gifted boy Zhorka.

The novel meticulously portrays the trauma inflicted on individuals and families under the shadow of war, the reconfiguration of identity, the transmission of craft, and the resilience and complexity of human nature in extreme circumstances. Rich with Rubina’s signature sensory detail—the ticking of clocks, the scent of spices in the Bukhara market, the air along the Volga River in Astrakhan—the novel builds a vivid and deeply resonant world.

The first volume ends abruptly at a pivotal moment: in Zhorka’s teenage years, as Caesar’s past is slowly unveiled. A great mystery remains unresolved: What is the true nature of the “Elegant Robbery”? Where is the “treasure” it left behind? And how will Zhorka use the “design” talent he has inherited from his mentor? All of this sets the stage for the second volume, a sweeping saga of adulthood.

[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 boundaries 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, “Russian Canaan” and “The Madman Gurevich,” both revolve around these central themes. Rubina excels at embedding individual destinies within grand historical narratives—such as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the history of the Jewish people—yet she eschews empty, grandiose storytelling, instead centering her work on the emotional traumas and survival wisdom of ordinary people. Her protagonists are often wise, resilient women, while she also delves deeply into the moral dilemmas and artistic quests of intellectuals amid sweeping societal upheaval. Her psychological depth and acute social observations 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 humanistic 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 novel “Da Vinci’s Handwriting” won the Ronghu “Portal” Award for Best Long Science Fiction Novel. In 2007, she was awarded the Big Book Prize for her novel “On the Sunlit Street.” 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 and 2020, she was shortlisted for the Big Book Prize for her trilogies “The Russian Canary” and “Napoleon’s Train,” respectively. 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 interwoven with countless plots,” says Dina Rubina.