The characters and names are fictional, but actual people inspired them. The historical events in which the book’s heroes participate are real. Any resemblance to people, living or dead, is coincidental.
Young Shakespeare participates in Romeo and Juliet’s acquaintance in the Italian city of Verona. He follows them from an Arab village lost among the sands to snow-covered Russia, Ukraine, and America. He goes through World War II with them, gets on a plane in Berlin, stands in Red Square in Moscow, and is ready to repeat this hard path to save those he loves.
One character in the book says that even those who have not read Romeo and Juliet know that they kiss. The story of unhappy lovers follows us in films, songs, poems, and epigrams.
What can we think about seeing a young man and woman smiling at each other on the balcony? It’s Romeo and Juliet!
Someone said Romeo and Juliet are dead. How can that be? Life never dies; it only falls asleep to wake up again. The book’s heroine, a girl in love, objects to the statement that Romeo and Juliet are fictional. She says they exist, but she hasn’t met them yet. At the end of her complicated but beautiful life, she realizes that Juliet is her and Romeo is the one she loves.
This book is about love and fidelity, but it’s not only about that. It touches upon religious topics, historical incidents, and people who have changed our planet’s lives. It was impossible to leave aside questions of morality. The lines about hatred, anti-Semitism, racism, violence, and murder are cruel, but you need to read about them to know—or not forget—that we must fight this evil.
Yohanan Dark was born in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. He lived and worked in Russia for seven years and then eleven years in Israel, where he married and fathered two boys. He now lives and works in the United States.