Nina Berberova, the author of the famous autobiography “My Italics,” a chronicler of the life of the Russian emigration, is faithful to this topic in her prose. The heroes of this book - and more often the heroines - found themselves in a foreign country like grains of sand drawn by a hurricane. And the dumb accompanist of a famous singer, and the daughter of a St. Petersburg official, and a recent high school student, and a once prosperous wife, and now an embroiderer “for 90 centimes per hour,” they are all trying to build a house out of homelessness... The stories were written in the 30s - 50s - 20th century.