Yuri Grigorievich Slepukhin (1926-1998) was a writer of complex and unusual fate. Born in Shakhty, Rostov region, he spent his childhood in the North Caucasus, in Pyatigorsk and Voroshilovsk (now Stavropol). During the war, Voroshilovsk was occupied, and Slepukhin, a 17-year-old boy, and his family were abducted to forced labor in Germany in 1943. The Slepukhins, who were liberated by Allied troops, were taken to Belgium, where they lived in forced exile for two years, and then moved to Argentina. In 1957, Yuri Slepukhin returned to the Soviet Union. These twists and turns of life and the experience of observing what is happening on both sides of the globe formed the basis of most of his works. Slepukhin began writing his first novel, Crossroads, inspired by nostalgia for his distant homeland and childhood in a southern town in the last pre-war years, back in Argentina, in 1949. He did not even imagine that this would be the beginning of an exciting tetralogy about the Second World War, which would later be called the "War and Peace" of the 20th century. The novel was published in 1962, and in 1968 its sequel, The novel Darkness at Noon, was published. The narrative focuses on life in an occupied city, a new topic for Russian literature, as well as the rise and fall of the youth underground.