The book is a complete collection of works by one of the “small classics” of American literature, Nathanael West (1903-1940). Along with the well-known ones - “A Friend of the Sorrowful” (1933) and “The Day of the Locust” (1939) - it published for the first time the stories “The Visions of Balso Snell” (1931) and “A Whole Million, or the Dismemberments of Lemuel Pitkin” (1934). In the first work West, whose hero makes a fantastic journey through the belly of the Trojan horse, expresses the writer’s desire to master various genres (burlesque, action-packed love story, philosophical treatise, etc.). “A Whole Million...” - a grotesque description of futile attempts to earn a million dollars - anticipates the literature of the "black humor", one of the most productive trends in post-war US prose (K. Vonnegut, J. Heller, T. Pynchon, J. Barth), ridicules the "philosophy of success" and the "sacred accessories" of the national tradition. Works published earlier are marked by deep the writer's interest in the internal conflicts of personal existence. West's stylistic mastery was vividly embodied in the translations made by V. P. Golyshev, S. B. Belov and A. Ya. Livergant.