The wonderful Russian prose writer Alexander Pokrovsky, the author of the famous books “Shoot!”, “72 Meters” and many others, collected his “arabesques” under one cover. Not only collected, but also illustrated, emphasizing (literally and figuratively) the liveliness and virtuosity of a beautiful literary genre that is disappearing today from our literature. The value of instant observation of the lopsided impulses of history, of lascivious life, of the mutating Russian language in Alexander Pokrovsky turn into an intriguing narrative, in the center of which he himself is a wit and a mocker, a subtle observer and a meticulous quoter, from whose gaze nothing can be hidden.