The Night Watch

Original title: Nochnoi Dozor (1998).

Walking the streets of Moscow, indistinguishable from the rest of its population, are the Others. The Others are magicians, possessors of supernatural powers and capable of entering the Twilight, a shadowy world that exists in parallel to our own. Each Other owes allegiance either to the Dark or the Light. The two factions, having long before realised that open struggle can only create chaos and disaster, coexist in an uneasy truce, each keeping a close eye on, the other's activities around the city. Their aim is not mutual destruction, but rather the maintenance of the precarious balance between good and evil.

Anton, a young Other who owes allegiance to the Light, is a Night Watch agent, newly seconded to patrol the streets and metro of the city, to protect ordinary people from the vampires and magicians of the Dark. On his rounds, Anton comes across a young woman, Svetlana, who he realises is under a powerful curse that threatens the entire city, and a boy, Egor, a young Other, as yet unaware of his own power, whom Anton narrowly saves from vampires.

Anton is assigned a partner, Olga, a powerful female Other who is trapped in the form of an owl in punishment for a past error of judgement. Together with their colleagues in the Night Watch, they struggle to remove Svetlana's curse and to protect Egor from the vampires that pursue him...

Set in a vividly-realised post-Soviet Russia, where vampires operate under license and Good and Evil exist in a Cold War-like balance of power, The Night Watch is a page-turning fantasy thriller, an international bestseller that represents the most original writing in its genre since Anne Rice's An Interview With A Vampire.