![]() ![]() But I soon realised that in this I differed less from the fictional characters than I first thought. ![]() I found the beginning of this book rather difficult because I had no idea who all the various factions and real-life characters were, nor what they were attempting to achieve. Its summer abundant with warmth and sun, its winter with snow, highest in its heaven stood two stars: the shepherds’ star, eventide Venus and Mars – quivering, red. Great and terrible was the year of Our Lord 1918, of the Revolution the second. This is the story of a few short days when the fate of the city seems up for grabs, and the lives of the Turbins, like so many in those turbulent times, are under constant threat. ![]() But there are other factions too – the German Army have installed a puppet leader, the Hetman Skoropadsky, and the Ukranian peasantry are on the march in a nationalist movement, under their leader Petlyura. They are White Russians, still loyal to the Russian Tsar, hoping against hope that he may have escaped the Bolsheviks and be living still. The three Turbin siblings live in the house of their recently deceased mother in the city. It is 1918, and Kiev in the Ukraine is at the swirling centre of the forces unleashed by war and revolution. “Blood is cheap on those red fields…” □ □ □ □ □ ![]()
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