Arif Aliyev
A story, which takes place in 2013, describes the world overflowing with "dangerous" criminals due to the official termination of death penalty. The UN "blue helmets" under the directive from the central authority (i.e., One World Government) decided to conduct a social "experiment" by forcibly dumping the outlaws on the deserted island...
The czar of Russia has died and a power vacuum has developed. This period in the late 16th and early 17th century has been called "The Time of Troubles." There are many impostors who claim to the right to rule, but there's only one heir, the Czarina Kseniya Godunova. She has married a Polish military leader who wants to claim the Russian throne in her name so he can rule all of Russia. As the Poles move in on Moscow in an attempt to install the czarina on the throne, Andrei, a serf with a life-long infatuation of the czarina attempts to save her from her brutal Polish husband.
After Polina, a mother of six, loses her husband, who went to jail for stealing charcoal and was killed when he tried to escape, she stays behind without any support. To be able to survive, Polina and her family start a folk group. But soon she understands that her children deserve a better fate, and she takes the desperate decision to steal a plane and go abroad... Fifteen years later, Polina is released from prison and finds out that fate has scattered her children all over the country: one is in the army, another is a miner in the Donbass, and the oldest, Lyonchik, who used to be in a mental institution, now pretends to be insane. Polina gathers all of her sons to free their older brother from the psychiatric hospital...
Two Russian soldiers, one battle-seasoned and the other barely into his boots and uniform, are taken prisoner by an anxious Islamic father from a remote village hoping to trade them for his captured son.
