"Stars of Intellectual Fiction" is a new series of high-quality foreign fiction. It publishes both previously unreleased works and novels in a new translation.... American archaeologist Martin Padway, traveling in Italy during the Mussolini era, incomprehensibly moves fourteen centuries ago and ends up in Rome in 535, on the eve of the invasion of Byzantine troops in the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths. Padway realizes that through his extensive historical knowledge, he can try to prevent the centuries of darkness and barbarism awaiting Europe after the coming war...