Horsemen of the Sands

"This impressive volume . . . Shot through with a mythic and cipherlike style, Yuzefovich’s novellas are cogent depictions of faith, obsession, power, and the ties that bind." — Publishers Weekly

"History and human drama collide in Leonid Yuzefovich’s Horsemen of the Sands, a wonderful tangle of relationships, religions, and realism...The prose adroitly bears both an ethereal and a concrete quality...culminating in a fascinating meditation on trickery and the power of suggestion." — Meagan Logsdon, Foreword Reviews

"[The Storm] asks readers to go beneath the surface, while [Horsemen of the Sands] opens up an unfamiliar world and invites us to think about the stories we tell. One can only hope that more of Yuzefovich’s work makes its way into English with all the speed and determination of the horsemen he chronicles." — Yelena Furman, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Without discarding realism, this finely counterpointed tale suggests that magic works only if one believes in it. The same can be said of fiction, and Leonid Yuzefovich’s writing certainly has what it takes to earn our trust." — Anna Aslanyan, The Times Literary Supplement

"Marian Schwartz delivers these very Russian stories in pitch-perfect English" — Asian Review of Books, a Best Book of the Year

"Yuzefovich has crafted a mini-epic. . . thoughtful reflections on anxieties buried just beneath the surface of Russian society." -- Hank Stephenson, Flyleaf Books, in Shelf Awareness

"These are fitting novellas to bring to an American public...they eschew the Russian penchant for long philosophical monologues or dialogues that create philosophical debate and meaning in a work, and instead Yuzefovich opts for the more “American” style of communicating meaning through events themselves...The internal consistency of the novellas is a testament to the craft of the writer, and also to Schwartz’s translation." — Ryan K. Strader, Cleaver Magazine


Praise for Leonid Yuzefovich:

"Yuzefovich is an author who knows the value of words and is firmly convinced that there is virtue in simplicity...this is high Russian prose written in superb language, very precise and lucid."--Lev Danilkin, Afisha (Russia) 

"Yuzefovich is one of the undoubted and undisputed greats of present-day Russian literature."--Konstantin Milchin, TASS (Russia)

"Yuzefovich's chief merit as a writer may be his astoundingly warm, tender, and at the same time humorous attitude toward his heroes. This is seen particularly well in 'The Storm'...The heroes of "The Storm" are bathed in the warmth of the author's gaze and protected by the author's love."--Marina Abasheva, Fililog (Russia)

"Yuzefovich often takes us to Mongolia. When he writes about that country, he achieves the impossible: he knows and loves it so well and describes it so realistically that he ends up creating his own special Mongolia, a 'Mongolia of the spirit.'"--Dmitry Kosyrev, RIA Novosti (Russia)

"Accuracy and attention to real characters are a distinguishing trait of Yuzefovich's books. His historical imagination has no truck with lies...Beginning with his first success, Autocrat of the Desert, about Baron Ungern, which came out in 1993, he writes about real heroes in real circumstances."--The Village (Russia)