Freedom, that same inner freedom to which we all strive, is the through line of the book. Human life is a free boat. Today - calm, tomorrow - storm. But you are free to decide whether to throw yourself into the abyss or wait out the storm on a calm shore. This is what the novel “Maigun”, and the stories and essays of Igor Gamayunov are about. “Maigun” is a chronicle novel. A chronicle of the life of one person and a huge country. A whole sixty years fit into the time frame of the story - an era, and more than one... This piercing, incredibly sincere story is read in one breath. Everything the author talks about—the hero’s difficult relationship with his father, his love for his mother, mixed with aching pity, insight, the bitter understanding that not everything in life is as simple and indisputable as it seemed in his youth—is familiar to everyone. But everyone experiences it in their own way...