The Ruslan Shanidza novels tell the story of an idealistic and ambitious athlete from the southern fringes of the Soviet Union. We witness his struggles under Communist rule and follow him into the period of murderous chaos that followed the collapse of the USSR.
The three books tell a continuous story but each can be read as a stand-alone.
In The Price of Dreams, we meet the young Ruslan. He makes little secret of his hatred of the ruling Communists and his longing for independence from Russia, but he gets away with it until a fight with the son of a leading Party member brings him to the attention of the KGB. Before long, he is forced to choose between his future and everything he has ever believed in.
Later, as the dictatorship begins to crumble, he will find himself caught up in ethnic conflict that reignites with catastrophic results.
At the start of A Long Night of Chaos, the world has turned upside-down, communism has collapsed and Ruslan’s homeland is independent. But the new country is rapidly falling apart as different ethnic groups try to detach themselves from one another. Ruslan’s patron and protector from the Communist era persuades him to return home to try to halt the slide to civil war.
But what is his former patron’s agenda? How far can Ruslan trust him? And as his peace mission begins to fall apart, Ruslan’s enemies move in for the kill.
In Day of the Long Knives, Ruslan sets out on his most ambitious quest: to bring down the kleptocrats and murderers who rule his homeland, men with blood on their hands who know they can never allow their power to slip. He assembles a fractious coalition of former enemies, but they face infiltration, beatings, arrests and assassinations.
Ruslan learns that he has placed himself and his family right in the firing line as his enemies plot a murderous crackdown.
Paul Clark Author Website 