Vacationing at the beach with her mother, Sasha Samokhina falls under the spell of Farit Kozhennikov. An unusual man with an air of the sinister, he directs her to perform tasks with potentially scandalous consequences and rewards her with strange golden coins. He then directs her to move to a remote village and use her gold to enter the Institute of Special Technologies. Sasha quickly discovers the institute's books are impossible to read, the lessons obscure to the point of maddening, and the work refuses memorization. The school does not punish students for their transgressions and failures-- instead their families pay a terrible price. -- adapted from jacket