
It is a mysterious city whose sun is switched on in the morning & switched off at night bordered by an abyss on one side & an impossibly high wall on the other Its inhabitants are people who were plucked from twentieth-century history at various times & places & left to govern themselves advised by Mentors whose purpose seems inscrutable This is life in the Experiment Andrei Voronin a young astronomer plucked from Leningrad in the 1950s is a die-hard believer in the Experiment even though his first job in the city is as a garbage collector As increasinbly nightmarish scenarios begin to affect the city he rises through the political hierarchy with devastating effect