Boris Aleksandrovich Kudryakov (1946–2005) is an outstanding St. Petersburg writer, photographer and artist. Published in the samizdat collection “Leper Colony-23”, in the typewritten magazines “Clocks”, “Obvodny Kanal”, “Transponance”. He was a member of the independent literary “Club-81”. One of the first laureates of the Andrei Bely Prize (1979), laureate of the International Mark. David Burliuk (1992), Turgenev Prize for short prose (1998). Author of the books “A Glass of Lead” (1990) and “Dashing Horror” (2003). Photographs by B. Kudryakov were exhibited in the 1980s at exhibitions in the USA, France, Japan, published in foreign magazines, and received awards; in 1981, his personal photo exhibition “The World of Dostoevsky” took place in Paris. This publication is the first full-fledged collection of B. Kudryakov’s prose. It includes texts from different years, including those previously unpublished or published only in samizdat. Texts are published preserving the author's spelling and punctuation. Author of the preface - Alexey Konakov