The book includes the latest works of the writer, essayist, literary critic and literary historian Samuil Aronovich Lurie (1942–2015). Continuing the galaxy of Russian truth-seekers who, with the power of their journalistic and artistic words, fought for justice, for man, Samuel Lurie became one of the brightest and most paradoxical among them. His unique sense of style was inextricably combined with the depth and acuity of his thinking. When talking about Shakespeare, he does not stay in the 16th century, but talks about the tragic suicide of teenagers in 2014 in a Yakut village and the brutal murder of a girl in Pakistan today. And the bureaucratic lawlessness of Tsarist Russia is a reason for him to talk about the human destinies of the recent Soviet and present times. Traveling through the pages of world literature following the pen of Samuel Lurie, we inevitably and constantly find ourselves in front of the mirror of modernity and see ourselves and our fellow tribesmen in it. “No one can do this, as Lurie wrote” (Viktor Shenderovich).