Timo von Bock's release by the Czar from nine years' incarceration does not spell the end of the Baron's troubles: he is confined to his Livonian estate to live under the constant eye of police informers planted among his own household, and is subjected to endless humiliations. It is claimed that he is a madman and in need of "protection: " a man would need to be insane, after all, to have taken a Czar at his word when asked for a candid appraisal of the state's infirmities. From the year of his release from prison and return to his wife Eeva, a woman of peasant stock to whom, with her...

The story of a man who rose from peasant stock to become Estonia's most famous medieval chronicler - The first novel in a historical trilogy by Estonia's most famous writer

The story of a man who rose from peasant stock to become Estonia's most famous medieval chronicler - The second novel in a historical trilogy by Estonia's most famous writer

When these stories were written the Estonians were not masters of their own house: the Soviets had been the occupying Power since 1940, apart from the three years 1941-44 when the Nazis were in occupation. Young Estonians, conscripted into the armies of both belligerents, found themselves compelled to fight each other. This is the background of these six stories featuring Peeter Mirk, a young law student who is more often in than out of prison and labour camp during these years - like his creator Jaan Kross. Forever carrying a charge of guilt that he has only contributed to his friends'...