This superb novel takes place in the remote settlement of Yazyk, at the end of a 100-mile spur off the Trans-Siberian Railway. It is 1919. Most of the inhabitants belong to a bizarre Christian sect who desire no part in the political upheavals further west. But events have intruded upon them in the form of a detachment of the Czechoslovak Legion. The soldiers are commanded by the terrifying Matula, whose flesh was ‘coarsely flayed by heat and cold and fevers and jaundices and scurvies gone by.’ While his exhausted men dream of escaping from years of fighting to Vladivostock, and thence home to Prague, Matula seems to contemplate establishing a private fiefdom in the wilderness even though he understands that the Reds are closing in.

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