The selected works that make up the three-volume set are real Russian prose, which is characterized by a deep feeling for the Motherland, care for it, and reverent sensitivity to the beauty of the surrounding world. The stories, tales and journalism of M.K. Zarubin are like a river feeding from a single source, the symbol of which was Ilim, a waterway in the Irkutsk region, the writer’s homeland. The writer says: “...my small homeland is the entire Ilimsky region, where my life fits with all its connections, trips, forests and fields, birds and animals, berries and mushrooms, sorrows and joys that are difficult to experience alone. Yes, all this, from horizon to horizon, is my small homeland – a great four-dimensional space that fits in my heart.” Having been born in Eastern Siberia, Mikhail Konstantinovich found himself associated with Leningrad-Petersburg for many years. The powerful arc of Irkutsk-Petersburg is like a rainbow over the endless Russian expanses in the writer’s work. Russia is in his heart, in the living creative word.