This book is about the indissolubility of human bonds. About an attempt to escape from everyday life, the inextricable intertwining of lies, or rather fiction, with real life (“Through Line”); reflections on what fate is if it changes so dramatically due to seemingly insignificant events (“First and Last”); a long farewell to life, in which “then” and “now” are combined, everyday chaos and eternity, the understanding that everything ends and nothing passes (“Merry Funeral”)... “Literature is an artistic understanding of the connections between man and the world. At the working level, so to speak. This is precisely what a writer does, even in those cases when he pretends that he is simply going to entertain the respectable public” (L. Ulitskaya).