It is a stirring account of the trials of Lieutenant Oleg Sharagin, a platoon commander in the elite Soviet airborne forces, his fellow officers and soldiers.
Sharagin survives many combat operations but is critically wounded just a few months before the end of his tour of duty when his platoon is ambushed in the course of a major offensive against the Mujahideen.
He is evacuated to a hospital in Kabul, undergoes surgery, and finally finds himself reunited with his family.
The war haunts Sharagin and the pain caused by the wound turns his life into a nightmare, leading to a dramatic finale.
It puts a human face on the Soviet soldier without sparing the gory details, like the hard to comprehend top-down authority and license for physical punishment and humiliation within the Russian army, the mental suffering which young soldiers and officers endured during their catastrophic experience in Afghanistan, or the gruesome killings of innocent Afghan civilians.