How did a petty swindler, who accidentally ended up in the town of Malye Vishery, suddenly become a classic of Russian literature? Why is it forbidden to wash windows in the city? Why do neighbors steal tricolor kittens? A historian from the northern capital, Mitya Romanov, drops everything and comes to the town to write on the treasured registration form: “I want to become the rector of the university.” He’s lying, he doesn’t need the rector’s position. “The troubling adventures of a stranger in an unfamiliar city are one of my favorite stories. You can enter this river more than once, with different guides: with Kafka, Ishiguro or the Strugatskys, with Kurosawa or Sergio Leone, but it is always a pleasure, because every time both the city and the hero are different, new, and everything can go again wrong in about a thousand ways.” (Jana Wagner.)