Grisha Bruskin is one of the most famous artists in the world who emerged from Soviet uncensored art. Until 1986, his artistic works were known to few, but in 1988 they became a sensation at the first Moscow Sotheby’s auction, where they were sold for a record amount at that time. This episode is only a small part of the documentary biographical canvas included in the book, in which Bruskin shows the paradoxical meeting of a private person and big history. His texts are distinguished by wit and lightness, as well as attention to the grotesque details of everyday life on two continents, small and large dramas of man of the 20th century. They reflect both a personal biography and the fate of an entire generation: from growing up in a Jewish family in the post-war USSR, the first encounters with anti-Semitism and the absurdity of late Soviet life, to the world of uncensored art and life in exile. Bruskin uses a detached, childlike view of the world around him, making short documentary sketches as expressive as the visual images of his artistic works. For the first time, works that put Bruskin among the most significant writers of his generation are collected under one cover, and visual materials from the author’s personal archive open up for the reader another dimension of these texts, helping to feel the breath of history in them. The book contains obscene language