About the book: 2020 / For the first time in Russian - a recent book by Christopher Buckley, author of the famous novel “They Smoke Here” and a dozen other bestsellers. The celebrated satirist, with his intimate knowledge of politics (a former speechwriter for George H. W. Bush), “has found a new use for his impressive talents. Why not the turbulent sixteenth century, actually?” (The Washington Post).So, meet Dismas. A former Swiss mercenary, and now an official servant of two masters: “supplier of shrines to the court of His Eminence Archbishop Albrecht of Brandenburg and Mainz, supplier of shrines to the court of the Elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise.” Dismas understands sacred relics like no one else, but he is not alien to an adventurous streak. And when one of Dismas’s adventures is revealed, Albrecht, who aspires to be a cardinal, makes Dismas and his accomplice Albrecht Dürer an offer that is impossible to refuse: to go from Mainz to Chambery to steal from the treasury of the Duke of Savoy one of the main shrines of the Christian world... “If in Hollywood terms , then The Relic Collector is like a cross between The Princess Bride and Ocean's Thirteen, only completely organic" (Kirkus Reviews).