The peculiarity of Sofia Sinitskaya’s prose is that it is unlike the prose of yesterday, today and, perhaps, tomorrow’s writers, unless the latter undertake to copy her dense, mischievous and tragic handwriting. In the story “Grisha Nedokvasov”, which opens the book, puppet master and actor Grigory Nedokvasov, who witnessed the murder of S. M. Kirov in a kindergarten on the Petrograd side (that’s right!), is exiled to remote places, and the death of the secretary of the Leningrad regional committee of the CPSU (b) framed in a tragic light, convenient for the current political moment. And with this, Gregory’s adventures are just beginning. What is striking in the book is not so much the entertaining and sometimes fantastic nature of the stories, but the talent with which these stories are told - undeniable, convincing and bright talent.