In the novel “Only I Live Here,” two simultaneously existing realities are intertwined. One is woven from Soviet fairy tales of the 20s and 30s. Here in the magical city of Leningrad lives the Red Army soldier Peter, here is the wise Lenin, cats and Ilyich grass. Here the Civil War turns into a mythical canvas of phantasmagoria, grotesquery and visionaryism - but without the slightest share of the now fashionable postmodernism. There is no room here for the irony that is so beloved today - everything is as serious as it can be in a fairy tale. But this tale is about war.