About this audiobook
Prince Nikita Serebryany returns to Russia during the reign of Ivan the Terrible and encounters a political world governed by fear and uncertain favour. His understanding of honour brings him into conflict with practices that others accept as necessary for survival. Private attachments become difficult to protect when authority can intrude into every relationship.
Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy combines historical adventure with an examination of loyalty under pressure. The oprichnina creates conditions in which outward obedience does not reveal what a person truly believes. Different responses to danger expose the distance between defending a principle in words and accepting the risks involved in acting upon it.
The novel explores conscience, courage and the vulnerability of people living within arbitrary power. Its sixteenth-century setting belongs to a literary reconstruction of the past, inviting readers to follow a dramatic story while considering how individual dignity can be defended when the surrounding order gives it little dependable protection.
