“Master!” - exclaimed the famous Soviet critic Anatoly Bocharov in one of his articles, finishing his analysis of Anatoly Kurchatkin’s story “The Mistress of a Cooperative Apartment.” Thirty years have passed since then, but every time I read the writer’s prose, I want to repeat this definition of a critic. The hero of Anatoly Kurchatkin’s new novel “Flight of the Bumblebee” is a talented poet and extraordinary personality. The mid-sixties of the past century, the strategic aviation of the USSR scrambled into the air with nuclear bombs on board, and the middle of the first decade of the new century, a meeting on the ski track in Sokolniki Park with a Kremlin official, the transfer of the required “kickback” in the form of packs of “green” - this is all the life of a hero. Two narrative streams, historical and contemporary, flow simultaneously, painting a clear and expressive portrait of the times for the reader.