A troop of Red Army soldiers disappears without a trace, in the heart of Kyiv, while visiting a banya, a traditional Ukrainian bathhouse. When Samson discovers fragments of bone in the banya’s furnace, he uncovers a sinister conspiracy. In this third volume of the series about kindhearted Samson and quickwitted Nadezhda, the Ukrainian master of absurd storytelling vividly depicts a Kyiv filled with political turbulence and eccentric characters — and draws playful parallels with the present day.

Samson and his colleague Kholodnyi are supposed to be investigating the sale of illegal meat. Yet they have hardly even begun when Samson’s girlfriend Nadezhda is abducted by striking railroad workers. Samson, of course, sets about trying to free her.
But what are the railroad workers up to? And why has the shadowy Chekist Abyazov been assigned to the police? Samson must get to the bottom of it all if he wants to solve the case and rescue Nadezhda.

When the unemployed history teacher Kolya moves into a new apartment in the Old Town of Kyiv, he finds a book by the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko with a great many hand-written commentaries. On closer perusal of the book, Kolya finds references to a diary by the poet which was believed to be lost without trace, and which now seems to be in a fort in the middle of the desert in Mangyshlak in Kazakhstan. Kolya sets off for Kazakhstan. Since he has no money for the journey, he stows away on a floating fish factory. A few days later he is set ashore with five litres of water and a substantial store of tinned fish, and a long march ensues. But the sun burns down relentlessly, Kolya's knowledge of the region is scanty, and he soon curses himself for having had such a crazy idea. He nearly perishes in a sandstorm, but a camel belonging to an old Kazakh pulls him out of the sand. The nomad Dshamshed takes the exhausted Kolya into his yurt, and his daughters Natasha and Gulya nurse him back to health ... An exciting adventure novel, an enchanting love story and a protest against all nationalism, whether Russian, Kazakh or Ukrainian.