Jaan Kross entered Estonian literature as a poet in the mid 1950s; in the 1970s, however, he became famous for his historical fiction. The lives and times of notable Estonians from the past have remained his favorite subject. Kross has said that he finds it fascinating to familiarize himself with a past world that was once as real as the one that exists now, and in most of his novels he succeeds in creating an illusion of such a world. In a few-especially Kolme katku vahel: Balthasar Russowi romaan (Between Three Plagues: Balthasar Russow's Novel, 1970-1980) and Keisri hull (1978; translated as The Czar's Madman, 1992)-the past comes alive with unusual clarity.

Kross was born in Tallinn on 19 February 1920. His father was a machine-manufacturing plant foreman whose modest home library contained books in several languages. Kross studied at the elite Westholm Gymnasium in Tallinn from 1928 to 1938; during this time...