Tsushima : Grave of a Floating City

London : Readers' Union, 1937. Hardcover. Very Good/No Jacket. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. 407 pages. Translated by Eden and Cedar Paul. Includes an Appendix: Comparative Table of Russian and Japanese Fleets, plus five battle maps. A clean, unmarked and solid copy, though obviously second hand. "Aleksey Silych Novikov-Priboi (Russian: ??????? ????? ???????-?????? 12 March 1877 - 29 April 1944) was the pen-name of A. S. Novikov,[1] an ethnic Russian writer in the Soviet Union, noted for his stories with a nautical theme.Novikov-Priboi was the second son of a peasant family from Matveyevskoye, Spassk Uyezd, Tambov Governorate. His mother, of Polish descent, had hoped that he would enter the church as a monk, but he was attracted to the thought of adventure by hearing stories from travelling sailors, and volunteered for the Imperial Russian Navy instead. He served as a seaman with the Russian Baltic Fleet from 1899 to 1906. He became involved with revolutionary activities from an early age and after publishing an article in a Kronstadt newspaper in 1903, was arrested from spreading "subversive propaganda". However, due to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, he was soon released, and with his records marked "unreliable" was transferred to the 2nd Pacific Squadron's battleship Oryol, on which he participated at the climactic Battle of Tsushima.....From 1920, Novikov-Priboi began work on a historical epic Tsushima, and was able to access government archives. The first part of the book was published in 1932, and the second part was awarded the Stalin Prize, (2nd degree). The novel describes the heroism of Russian sailors and certain officers, the increase in revolutionary activity, and what he considered criminal negligence of the Imperial Russian Naval command." (Wikipedia - great article)