Mikhail Milikov

At the heart of the story is a rural schoolteacher who, in 1944, leaves his native Bessarabia as the Red Army advances with heavy fighting. The gentle, cultured Sebastian Radu has every reason to avoid meeting the so-called liberators. And not just because one of the new regime’s first measures will be a background check, and Radu will have to write “noble” in the “social origin” field. The point is, our protagonist already has some experience dealing with representatives of the “new world.”

Panoramic life of a Moldovan village in the second half of the twentieth century.

Fascinated by the idea of creating an industrial inter-collective farm garden, scientist Andrei Barbu interrupts his work at the institute and moves to the district...