Accurate, funny and brutally truthful, Alice Byalskaya’s book “The Experience of Fighting Asphyxiation” touches on those aspects of Soviet life that were silent then and almost never talked about now - racing, secret gambling parlors organized by famous actors, artels of artists who painted Central Asian village councils and kindergartens... Junior researcher, enterprising lover of dolce vita Savely, aka Seva, aka Byasha, striving for freedom, comes up with scam after scam and does not fit into the narrow framework of his time. Alice Bialska's book is about how we seek, use and abuse freedom; about the experiment in which all Soviet citizens unwittingly took part, and about the love of Seva and Zhenya, the only thing that helps them survive.