"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.
- ISBN10 0394584376
- ISBN13 9780394584379
- Publish Date 4 January 1993 (first published 7 December 1992)
- Publish Status Remaindered
- Out of Print 17 November 2016
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Pantheon Books
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 362
- Language English