The book by the famous writer, journalist, editor Boris Druyan consists of two parts. The first is an autobiographical story about war and post-war childhood, about the Jung School, about friends in the navy, at Leningrad University, about work on the virgin lands of Kazakhstan and in Siberia. The second part contains true stories about writers and books from the now distant era of stagnation. The “biographies” of the books were very diverse: some were happy, others were tragic, since it was extremely difficult for them to reach the reader, or even not destined to happen. But all the books faced common dangers: the chaos of censorship and the watchful gaze of party ideologists. The author managed to tell about the literary life of those years simply, entertainingly and vividly.