The works of Yuz Aleshkovsky for a long time, until the mid-90s, were published in small editions only abroad. And this is dramatic and funny, like his prose itself - after all, it (just like the works of Zoshchenko and Ven. Erofeev) is intended rather for “internal use.” Where a Russian person will laugh or almost cry, an American or European will only again note his inability to understand “this mysterious people.” Aleshkovsky's heroes - hard workers, sages and spontaneous philosophers - are constantly in a state of local war with the absurdity of "Soviet" life and always emerge victorious. Their bizarre stories, flavored with the author's Rabelaisian irony, are parts of a single monologue - confession; This is the language of the street and zone, communal kitchens and Soviet offices, the language and voice, in the words of Brodsky, of “Russian consciousness, criminalized by national experience... mocking itself and, therefore, not completely destroyed.”