Guzel Yakhina is the brightest debutante in the history of modern Russian literature, laureate of the Big Book and Yasnaya Polyana prizes, author of the bestselling books Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes and My Children. Her new book Echelon to Samarkand is a travel novel and a kind of 'red eastern'. 1923 year. Echelon chief Deev and commissar Belaya evacuate five hundred street children from Kazan to Samarkand. A series of exciting and scary adventures along the way, vast geography - from the forests of the Volga region and the Kazakh steppes to the Kyzyl-Kum deserts and the mountains of Turkestan, a palette of destinies and characters: refugee peasants, security officers, Cossacks, the eccentric world of little vagrants with their language, psychology, superstition and hopes ... 'I can say that such books are born very rarely and change everyone who reads. We all remember this feeling from Platonov: what you read changed you. The travels of Marco Polo and Afanasy Nikitin to the unattainable l