Spanish writer Vicente Blasco Ibanez, best known for his work "blood and sand", as well as its Hollywood film adaptation, lived in Paris during the first World War and wrote his novel there, which became world-famous. First published in 1916, at the height of the Great War, it tells the story of two families: the Frenchman Denouille and the German von Gartrot, married to two sisters, the Daughters of an Argentine landowner. With the outbreak of hostilities, relatives find themselves in opposite camps. With the help of images of the eternal companions of humanity, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – Pestilence, War, Famine and death – the author describes the mood of society and the horror and devastation that Europe at that time plunged into. And despite this, an invincible desire to live is being revived in its fields of death.

For Ukrainians, the novel is more relevant than ever. Not on every page we recognize familiar emotions: unwillingness to believe in the possibility of war, the shock of the first days, the subsequent euphoria, the minute-by-minute wait for news and the belief in an early victory...