The prose of Andrei Gelasimov (born in 1965) is distinguished, first of all, by a real and kind attitude to reality, unusual for today's literature. There is no condemnation, no pathos of exposure, no complaints about the vicissitudes of fate. Life is perceived as it is.

Witty plots, a free and artistic manner of narration - these are, perhaps, the main characteristics of the proposed book. “The most worthwhile of all the prose reviewed is Andrei Gelasimov’s story “Thirst.” The main character (again the narrator) was disfigured in the war - his face was completely burned. He makes a living renovating apartments. In between orders, he drinks to the point of insanity - so as not to think about anything and remember nothing. “The driving force of the plot” is the search for a friend, a degenerate alcoholic who sold his apartment and disappeared. As a result of successively unfolding events, the hero gradually returns to life - he meets his father’s new family and his new sister and brother, reconciles quarreling friends, begins to draw again (before the army he studied to be an artist), in the finale there is even a hint of the possibility of love... An undoubted advantage the text is an excellent colloquial language, which, thanks to the author, the characters use, and an emotional component: a rare, in modern times, positive pathos is presented in a somewhat disguised form. All this, plus a keen eye for detail and a well-known laconicism of presentation, brings the text into the category of experimental samples - how to make literature “readable”, while remaining “serious” at the same time.