ABSTRACT
Armchair diplomats and exacting connoisseurs of that all-too-rare delicacy, the subtle historical novel, will be delighted by Professor Martens ‘ Departure (1984), the second book by the Estonian poet and novelist Jaan Kross (1920-2007) to be translated into English. Following The Czar’s Madman (1978), which was published in 1993 in an equally vivid translation by Anselm Hollo, this new, often dreamlike novel, set in the first decade of the twentieth century but sometimes reaching back long before those years, traces the fears and fantasies of a foreign affairs expert, Professor Friedrich Fromhold Martens, who is taking a very long train ride through Czarist Russia.
