Loop and stone in green grass. The Gospel According to the Executioner.

In the 1970s, the classic Russian literature duo, the Vayner brothers, authors of the famous novel "The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed," embarked on a dangerous path: desiring to serve the truth in a country with a totalitarian regime, they created an anti-Soviet duology "The Loop and the Stone in the Green Grass" and "The Gospel According to the Executioner." The books touched on two highly forbidden topics: unpunished crimes of the "organs" and the "Jewish question." The heroes of the novel "The Loop and the Stone in the Green Grass" are Sulamif and Alesha, her lover, the son of one of the leaders of the KGB. The fates of their families intertwine in the most remarkable way. The novel contains both a tragic love story and an exciting investigation with chases and discoveries. Reality, even in a relatively "vegetarian" time, destroys any living life, anyone who does not fit into the meager Soviet standards and desires the impermissible - freedom. At the center of the novel "The Gospel According to the Executioner" is Pavel Khatkin, a charismatic anti-hero who skillfully weaves deadly conspiracies but finds himself in the grip of a passionate desire for a woman whose life and family he ruthlessly destroyed. In the 1970s, retired but not yet old KGB colonel Khatkin is still in the game. "I want to win in life," he says. Memory sometimes throws him from a prosperous present into a bloody past. We see his life from the inside, through his own eyes. And here is the "good news" from the executioner: the element of people who break others' destinies without hesitation breeds fear. They generate it, feed on it, and understand only this language. Words of mercy and love are unknown and inaccessible to them. Their lives are also maimed. But this does not make them any less dangerous.