Samuel Lurie is called the best modern Russian essayist. He is the author of the novel “The Writer Pisarev” (1987), collections of essays “Conversations in favor of the dead” (1997), “Anthill” (2002), and “Successes of clairvoyance” (2002). “This Way of Understanding” (2007) and others. Samuel Lurie is a full member of the Academy of Russian Contemporary Literature, laureate of the. P. A. Vyazemsky (1997), “The Station Agent” (2012), etc. Samuel Lurie’s new book, published on his anniversary, contains essays from different years. The author makes an attempt to inventory the values of a more or less typical St. Petersburg intellectual. He understands how City and Literature interact in his mind and in the surrounding reality. He walks along imaginary streets, talks with the ghosts of other authors and other people’s characters, speculates about fiction - everything is as usual. “Reading and re-reading Lurie is good for your health. Perhaps he will not increase our hemoglobin, but he will bring down our leukocytes, because his thesis is simple: culture is possible.” Dmitry Savitsky (Paris).