Robert Aleksandrovich Shtilmark (1909-1985) is known primarily as the author of the legendary novel “The Heir from Calcutta.” However, his creative legacy is much broader. All readers of the Collected Works can be convinced of the truth of these words. The second volume includes parts 3 and 4 of the chronicle novel “A Handful of Light,” a work of unusual genre. This is not a memoir in the traditional sense, but rather a confession of a writer, a novel of repentance.