The novel “Candle” immediately made the famous screenwriter Valery Zalotukha a famous prose writer - he was awarded the “Big Book” prize twice - both by the Literary Academy and by a reader vote. Alas, posthumously, the writer did not live to see his triumph for only a few months. But he managed to prepare for publication another volume of prose, which included both well-known film stories (“Muslim”, “Makarov”, “The Long March for the Liberation of India”...) and a previously unpublished cycle of early stories. When Andrei Tarkovsky read the story “My Father is a Miner,” which gave the title to both the cycle and this book, he accepted its author into his workshop at the Higher Courses for Directors and Screenwriters. The students of Zalotukha and Kaidanovskiy God were waiting for the master to return from Italy. But they didn’t wait.