About the book: 2021 / The last days of May 1936, the height of repression. The officers' conspiracy against Chopur (Stalin) and the Soviet-Polish war (1919–1921), the events of which run through the entire novel. Trotskyist Efim Milkin flees from the security officers to Baku with the help of his former common-law wife, actress and film director Margarita Barskaya. In the Windy City he accidentally meets a Moscow friend, a correspondent for the newspaper Pravda, who is also hiding in Baku. A friend invites Yefim to his place for a Shabbat meal, and he falls in love with his younger sister. The feast imperceptibly moves to the balcony of house 20/67, corner of Second Parallel Street. All night long, Efim tells the young people a story from the life of regimental commissar Efimych. Will the talented writer and film playwright, a former Red commander, manage to avoid persecution by the security officers and finish the novel, or will the traitor, whom Efim has not been able to identify for many years, already be on his trail? “Steamboat” Babelon" is a fusion of family chronicles and a historical detective story with political overtones, in which it is difficult to distinguish fiction from truth, historical fact from the author’s imagination. The fates of the novel's heroes are similar to the fates of many of our compatriots who found themselves on the symbolic steamship "Babelon" in the first half of the 20th century.