Andrey Porubin

The amazing and tragic life story of the Russian Paralympic judoka Oleg Kretsul. Having lost his sight in a car accident, Kretsul did not give up the sport and was subsequently able to win Olympic gold at the Paralympics in Beijing.

The invention of the first modern robot for table tennis training turns Ionel Sporea into a star in the world of Romanian sports. A trip to Moscow, however, ends with a harsh sentence: 12 years in prison for treason. Who is to blame: destiny, the Ceausescu regime, or himself?

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.”