The Green Light

The literature of the sea possesses an especially evocative and refreshing romanticism. This romanticism is to be found in full measure in Leonid Sobolev's The Green Light, a tale of heroic deeds at sea by men defending their country. It is a novel of the courage and comradeship of men at sea, and of that "spirit of the sea" to which Leonid Sovolev has devoted many of his books.

The life and writings of Leonid Sobolev are inseparably linked with life in the Soviet Navy, where he served for some twenty years.

Born in Irkutsk in 1898, Sobolev was educated at the Naval College at St. Petersburg, which he graduated in 1918. For many years he served as an officer on warships of the Baltic Fleet. His first works -- short stories, poems, and humorous sketches, were published when he was 28, and his first novel appeared in 1933.

In The Green Light, first published in Russian in 1954, the author, still faithful to his favorite theme of the lives of Soviet sailors, describes the emotional development of his hero.