Efim Dorosh devoted about twenty years of his life to the “Village Diary”, which received wide popularity among readers and high praise from our critics. A depiction of the life of an ancient Russian city on the shore of a lake and its surrounding villages, acute modernity and deep penetration into the history of Russian culture , reflections on art - all this, combining in a unique way, makes up the amazing uniqueness of this book. Its individual parts were published at different times by our publishing house, but united together under one cover they are collected for the first time in the collection offered to the reader. To our deep regret, Efim Dorosh himself will not see it: he died on August 20, 1972. The uniqueness of this publication also lies in the fact that its design was made by a friend of Efim Dorosh, the artist T. Mavrina. Artist T. A. Mavrina