Valery Popov, a famous St. Petersburg prose writer, presents to the readers his new book in the “ZhZL” series, this time risking taking on such a complex and hotly debated topic as the fate and work of Mikhail Zoshchenko (1894-1958) . Unlike previous biographies of the famous satirist, which, as a rule, focused on his dramas, V. Popov shows us a courageous, successful, secular man, who was carried away by the many joys of life and endured his dramas with dignity. “A good life does not make one a writer,” Zoshchenko argued. And this truly philosophical statement can be called the main idea of the book. The gift of a satirist is a dangerous gift in itself, and Zoshchenko understood this well, as does the author of his biography, who presented his hero both in glory and in retribution for it.