Bengt Youngfeldt is a famous Swedish writer, scientist, author of numerous works on Russian culture, translator and publisher. He published for the first time in Russian the correspondence of V. Mayakovsky and L. Brik, wrote books about Mayakovsky and about the outstanding linguist Roman Yakobson, and recently prepared a historical work about St. Petersburg. Bengt Youngfeldt was also the publisher and main translator of Joseph Brodsky into Swedish. They met often over the years, since, after becoming a Nobel laureate in 1987, the poet came to Sweden every summer, finding here, in his words, “an ecological niche - the same moss, the same granite, the same climate, the same the same clouds” as in the forcedly abandoned homeland. * * *This is a book that should be read not only by those who are interested in Joseph Brodsky, but also by those few who are interested in poetry. — Dagens Nyheter* * *The book has a modest subtitle “Notes on Joseph Brodsky,” but it is precisely thanks to the unobtrusiveness of the approach, as well as the author’s openness to understanding the poet, that it helps readers better understand the contradictions of his character and thinking. — Svenska Dagbladet* * *Bengt Youngfeldt is a Swedish writer, Slavist scholar, translator of Russian poets (V. Mayakovsky, O. Mandelstam, etc.), laureate of the Langman Cultural Foundation, the Swedish Academy and twice laureate of the Strindberg Prize (“Swedish Booker” ). And B. Youngfeldt was a long-term friend, translator and publisher of I. Brodsky. This book, according to the author, is “notes about a great poet and controversial person,” acquaintance with whom made it possible to see the most important features of his personality.