the winner of the following literary competitions and awards:

      ABOUT THE BOOK

      “For lovers of non-standard! It is not „business as usual“ here. This story expands the mind. Everyone has the own island, but a look from an Other Reality at the earthly life of mere mortals is a great opportunity to pause and reflect on the present and the eternal…”

      “An amazing thriller for a screen adaptation! It begins with the secrets of a mysterious island, where magicians practice Voodoo, the Wish Tree grows and the Portal to other worlds functions. Then the plot smoothly flows into the story of a murder, but the identity of the murderer becomes not so important in the end, because life after death goes on, and you choose which way yourself!”

      “The island is a temptation, an exam that everyone has to go through. The book makes you look at your own life differently, and the „second death“ in the cemetery of memories turns everything inside. I am impressed by the ending!”

      “It is laconic and philosophically profound! A small wave turns into tsunami and plunges you headlong into the Ocean of the Divine Light through a story about love and death, in which the Creator and his plans on each of us win…”

      “The Wish Tree is a trap for one’s sole! I wonder… what three wishes I would make if I were there. Would I be able to solve the riddle of Charon and get off this damned island?”

      Preface

      (“Behind the Scenes of ‘The Island of Charon’”)

      In February 2014, suddenly (not by accident, of course, there are no coincidences!) I found myself on the gloomy island of Camotes, lost in the Pacific Ocean, where, as it turned out later, the real healers and magicians live.

      I remember me thinking in pitch darkness under the black-book Sky with a billion flickering lanterns, on the shore of the Ocean (really Pacific, it stepped on the shore silently and slowly swallowing it, piece by piece, as a dessert for dinner to the accompaniment of cicadas), “if I were Agatha Christie, I would write my strongest detective story here, and if I were Alfred Hitchcock, I would shoot my scariest thriller!”

      However, then, in 2014, only a charming poem knocked on my door (“A lunar lantern is hanging on a palm tree”), further included in my “Island”, which was materialized in the form of a philosophical and mystical story in… seven years. Due to the spirit of the mysterious Camotes, firmly settled in my heart, it sprouted and, gaining strength, branched out, turning into a real Tree of Wishes.

      Throughout July 2021, “The Island” was boiling in my mind like a potion in an alchemist’s flask – individual ingredients were merging into a single and magical something. The boiling point reached me on the Full Moon, which happened on Athos on Friday, August 13, 2021, on the eve of the Orthodox holiday of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, celebrated in Greece from the 14^th to the 15^th of August (two weeks earlier than in Russia). It was the midnight between Friday the 13^th and Saturday the 14^th that collided the Forces of Evil and Good and became fatal for the main characters of “The Island”, Alice and Mark, – instead of love, on the long-awaited first date a horror irony of fate met them.

      Yes, I started writing “The Island of Charon” in the Greek village of Ouranoupolis, located on the border of Orthodox Athos, in the house of a beekeeper, where I lived in the summer (just since 2014, the year of my acquaintance with the pagan Camotes) in a small cell overlooking the tiny island of Ammouliani, the former possession of the Athos monastery of Vatopedi. Thus, two Islands appeared in the book, the one still “owned” by the magicians (Camotes) and the one, until recently, owned by the monks (Ammouliani). They create a Portal as a temptation for the souls, tearing between their Lower and Higher Selves not only during life, but also in the afterlife, for the souls, which sooner or later must make their final choice in favor of the Forces of Light or Darkness.

      I started writing the book without knowing whether Mark would reach the Athos monks, who would meet Alice in the Other World, which way exactly the fate of my characters would be developed in the Other Reality, whether they would be able to avoid the traps of the Astral and leave the ghostly Island…

      Have I been nursing a murder committed by the Forces of Darkness in the territory of the Forces of Light for all these seven years? It sounds scary. But no, of course, this is a mystical journey with elements of philosophy and the inside-out detective.

      The reason for this is my habit of looking at Earth and earthly life from the Other Reality, that is, from the Looking Glass, from the Subtle World, located beyond our existence.

      “Why?” you ask. I’m interested in looking at everything here from the Outside, from the Sky, not vice versa. It has been interesting since childhood (we all come from our childhood, and mine one is associated with many deaths), so my novels in the series “Playing Another Reality” are an attempt to understand earthly life, going beyond its framework and looking at it from the “Outside”, and at the same time to explore the “Outside”.

      Thus,