Valery Popov's magnificent prose continues the best traditions of Russian literature. Through the author's irony and laughter, one can discern his endless surprise - is the world in which we lived and live really so strange? Gogol’s “laughter through tears” also overwhelms us, the readers. We look in the mirror through the magnifying glass of artistic expression - and we see this! Valery Popov’s new book “In the City of Yu.” is a monument to our time, the last decades of the 20th century and millennium. What a time, such a monument! © Publishing house "Lokid", 1997