Paperback, 945 pages, a historical novel, fiction, but at the same time something like an introduction to the history of Russia, the author paints the lives of a few fictitious families from A.D. 180 to 1992, .....
The author managed (or so it at least seems to me) to evoke very well a Russian atmosphere in his English text. He spent long time in Russia researching for his book.
This book demonstrates nicely how the present Russian nation (people) are the result of centuries long mixing of different peoples and tribes. Very similar to the American people, or (which is less known) the Japanese (who are the result of mixing of various quite different ethnic elements who were arriving to the Japanese islands around 2500 years ago). Most probably, no nation (people) is ethnically very pure, as some people would like to believe, everybody is in the process of continuous mixing.
It's fascinating reading ....
(I guess I'll add here more remarks later)