About the book: 2020 / All the main characters of the previous novel gather again in Skotoprigonyevsk after 13 years. Alyosha lived in it all this time. Mitya returns from Siberian hard labor (Grushenka comes with him), and Ivan, together with Katerina Ivanovna, comes from St. Petersburg. During this time, Alyosha became (along with his “boys”) a member of the local branch of the Narodnaya Volya party, Ivan became a secret employee of the Tsar’s secret police, and Mitya became an informant. The intrigue revolves around the arrival of Tsar Alexander II in Skotoprigonyevsk to raise the relics of St. Zosima and the opening of a new station on the railway, which was extended from the St. Petersburg-Moscow line.