Nikolai Samokhin (1934–1989) is a wonderful Russian writer, in whose works the funny and the serious, lyricism and satire, social types and bizarre characters are inseparably intertwined. They said about Nikolai Samokhin that he “has an absolute sense of the funny.” Indeed, he, like no one else, knew how to see a paradox, a capacious detail, a characteristic feature in everyday life. At the same time, Samokhin never sought to write “humor” itself; he considered truth to be the main criterion of real literature and did not allow himself the slightest falsehood - neither for the sake of a “clarity”, nor for the sake of “public benefit.”