The Great Patriotic War is drawing to a close, but a new darkness is falling over Soviet Russia. And for a disparate, disconnected clutch of wanderers - many thousands of miles apart, linked only by destiny and by paths that are destined to cross - four parallel journeys are just beginning. Goritch and his driver, rolling through water, sand and snow on an empty petrol tank; the Occupant of a black airship, looking down benevolently as he floats above the Fatherland; young Andrey, who leaves his religious community to serve a higher cause; and Kharitonov, who schleps from the Sea of Japan to Leningrad, carrying a fuse that when lit blow will all and sundry to kingdom come. The Bickford Fuse, taking its name from William Bickford, the English inventor who developed the safety fuse and paved the way for dynamite, explores the evolution of the Soviet mentality from the end of World War II to the death of Khrushchev. Blending metaphor and fable with real events and people from Russian history it evokes - with Kurkov's customary brio - the absurdity, tragedy and human drama of those turbulent years.