A new collection of articles by critic and literary scholar Mark Amusin, “Fire of Centuries,” covers a wide range of names and phenomena of modern – and not only – literature. The book consists of three parts. The first is a series of portraits of prominent Russian prose writers of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods (from Yuri Trifonov to Dmitry Bykov), with the addition of an anniversary essay about Alexander Herzen and a review of literary reflections of the “revolution of the 90s.” The second part analyzes the dialectic of preserving classical traditions and overcoming them in the work of Leningrad-Petersburg prose writers of the second half of the past - the beginning of the present centuries. The articles that form the third part of the book are devoted to the complex one and a half century dialogue between Russian and foreign literatures (represented by such names as J. Conrad and Max Frisch, Lem and Cortazar).