The book “A Piece of Life” by Nadezhda Teffi (1872–1952) includes stories about Russian Paris. The mocking diminutive in the title hides an internal tragedy: apt irony in the works of the “queen of Russian humor” was often combined with tenderness and pity. The heroes of the book are emigrants, “motley and heterogeneous creatures, completely strangers to each other, perhaps, from time immemorial by nature, mutually hostile,” who “huddled together and call themselves by the common name ‘we.’” In addition to works from lifetime collections, the book includes stories from emigrant periodicals unknown to the modern reader, Teffi’s memoirs about her contemporaries and memories of the writer herself.