Beasts, men and gods

In the frigid winter of 1920, a learned man living in a remote Siberian town finds his world turned upside down by the raging turmoil of the Russian Revolution. With Red soldiers lurking at his doorstep, he is forced to flee into the untamed forest, scavenging supplies and taking up the life of a hunter and trapper to stay alive. The stark wilderness becomes both refuge and test as he learns to navigate a landscape where every rustle could signal a threat.

Among the towering pines he encounters a pair of Bolshevik soldiers, their presence a reminder that the political storm follows even the deepest woods. A tentative tea shared between strangers offers a brief, uneasy truce, while their conversation reveals the brutal hunt for “counter‑revolutionaries” that drives the region’s violence. The protagonist’s quick wits and the harsh reality of survival blur the lines between hunter and hunted.

As he settles into this precarious existence, the reader is drawn into a vivid portrait of early‑twentieth‑century Siberia—a world of icy rivers, endless taiga, and the constant whisper of danger that hints at larger mysteries lurking beyond the forest’s edge.