The great happiness of obscurity - such as that of Vladimir Gurkin - falls to a rare creator: this is when your own name is covered, like a cover, by the title of your main work. Everyone knows “Love and Doves”; they have long lived separately from their author - like a folk song. But Gurkin also has “A Fistful of Crying”: “a masterpiece of Russian drama – no doubt about it. Place it wherever you want – between Ostrovsky and Griboedov or Sukhovo-Kobylin” (Vladimir Menshov). And in general, Gurkin is “a true dramaturgical amazement, I have long been waiting for such a national, folk theater, merciless to history and merciful to the heroes” (Lyudmila Petrushevskaya). In this book, he is almost entirely in his plays and in the memory of his friends.