The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

The Spanish writer Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, best known in our country for the work "Blood and Sand", as well as its Hollywood adaptation, lived in Paris during the First World War and wrote his novel there, which became world famous. First published in 1916, at the height of the Great War, it tells the story of two families: the Frenchman Denois and the German von Hartrott, married to two sisters, daughters of an Argentine landowner. With the start of hostilities, relatives find themselves in opposite camps. With the help of the images of the eternal companions of humanity, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse - the Plague, War, Famine and Death - the author describes the mood of society and the horror and devastation that plunged Europe at that time. And despite that, on her deathbeds, an invincible desire to live is reborn.

For Ukrainians, the novel is more relevant than ever. On almost every page, we recognize familiar emotions: the reluctance to believe in the possibility of war, the shock of the first days, the subsequent euphoria, minute-by-minute waiting for news and belief in a quick victory when the enemy manages to be pushed back from the capital, shock from the atrocities of the occupiers and from the wave of refugees, and a gradual change of attitude in the following months, when it becomes clear what this war is really about...