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The breath of the dark

«The breath of the dark is the text that represents me more, – said Nicolai Lilin, – Why does emerge the part of my life in which I acknowledge». A history of «final», The Chronicle of a time that has transformed a soldier, a sniper, a vet, ' a killer ', the man who today writes this book.

The breath of the dark begins with a train journey, some hundreds of kilometres on completion of the entrance into a new life. Military service in Chechnya is finished, It is time to return, but for the protagonist the word lost meaning return. Is another man who arrives at the station of Bender, and another is the city that welcomes him: identical at first glance, yet different.
Locked up in his apartment, only with his weapons imported illegally from Chechnya, Nicolai lives his ' war ' of solitude, anxiety, fear. AND, especially, hates. Hates the buildings, the streets, humanity ' peaceful ' that looks fake, intolerable in his claim to civilization. To try to deal with the atrocities suffered and committed, He decides to embark on a new journey, to the place that represents the only possible return: la Siberia. Immersed in nature, in the silence, guided by the wisdom of Grandpa, seems to find a simple and quiet life. But a past so heavy you don't delete the silence, and even with the determination, and what seems like a possibility for redemption may be at any time a trap that reverses the race and back to the starting point.

So, It may happen that a job in a private security firm in St. Petersburg into a new war, more hidden and apparently less violent than fought in uniform, yet, If you can, even more dangerous. A war that makes its victims in the streets and squares, but that is fought mainly in the luxurious rooms of the new economic elite, in the relations between oligarchs and corrupt politicians, in the secret KGB archives inherited from.

Between plots and treachery, attacks and impossible loves, Nicolai Lilin reads and interprets for us the scars of contemporary Russia, in a novel that only rebuilds experience unbearable intensity.

In front of me was expecting nothing, a nothing in which I was obliged to enter, find a way, create my new journey, start a life from scratch, Maybe refusing what I was, trying to become another person. The step into new dimension was comparable to that in total darkness, without seeing where it goes, a gesture of despair more than gambling. Once the path to the dark, with each new step I felt the nature of change, I felt his «breath». When I discovered this feeling, instinctively I tried a light inside myself to illuminate my path, leaning constructive thoughts, generating expectations, Perhaps the first attempts of hopes.

Nicolai Lilin
2011 . Supercoralli Italian
2010 . eBook
Einaudi