This anthology presents short prose by famous English and American writers of the 20th century - Thomas Wolfe, V. S. Naipaul, William Gass, Nathanael West, James Jones - in translations by one of the most famous Russian translators - Viktor Golyshev. In the stories included in the book, the reader discovers the variety of stylistic manners and thematic diversity characteristic of the literature of the 20th century: Wolfe’s keen observation in describing the cruel organism of the city; Naipaul's grotesque outsider's view of the unfamiliar life and culture of a small colonial country that has gained independence; narrative reticence, reflecting the “fractured” consciousness faced with the illogicality of life, in Gass; the drama of the loss of faith and the impossibility of an altruistic choice, accompanied by signs of surreal writing, in West; finally, realistic psychologism in the description of military life, crowned with timeless symbolism, in Jones.