Early eighties. An industrial city working for the defense industry, its outskirts, a polluted piece of space, where black chimneys smoke among the gloomy factory buildings, and around them there are five-story panel buildings that look like twins. In this setting, childhood passes and youth begins between two “bosom enemies” and the girl with whom they are both in love—the main characters of Vladimir Shpakov’s novel “Songs of Whales.” And no one can even imagine what drastic changes await the fate of the city, the country and their own destinies. The novel was included in the long list of 2015.