The Czar's Madman

The Czar’s Madman combines the elements of a gripping historical novel with the profound sensibilities of a great writer wrestling with the deepest moral issues of our day.

When Colonel Timotheus von Bock, a Baltic nobleman and a favorite of the czar, returns a hero from the battlefields of Europe in 1813, he is convinced that new and better ways are coming and is determined to play his part in bringing them about. But he soon scandalizes his fellow aristocrats, first by marrying a peasant's daughter, then by condemning the czar’s tyrannical rule. The reaction is prompt: von Bock is banished from his estate and imprisoned for nine years.

Von Bock’s story is the main thread in a richly worked tapestry evoking Russia and its Baltic provinces after the fall of Napoleon. Recounting this compelling tale, Jaan Kross takes the reader deep into the passions of a time and country that foreshadow the tragedies of our own century.