The Tale of Svetik. Svetik is a black marketeer and speculator. Life twists and turns her in a whirlpool of meetings and partings, forces her to answer the question every day: “Why am I actually living?”, and to put up with her own poverty - material and spiritual. Vladimir Makanin knows how to talk about everyday life in such a way that it is colored with all the colors of experiences: from the gloomiest to the brightest. Special pleasure will be given to those readers who remember how difficult it was in Soviet times to get world bestsellers like “Angelica,” boots, nylon tights and cake “Prague”: Makanin describes the bygone era in all its completeness and accuracy, as if you were traveling in a time machine and seeing everything with your own eyes!