Original translation by Irina Koltasheva, scanned from a 1999 pocket book published by Phantom Press. “Working with Les in the same workshop, sitting at the next table and not writing about him was simply impossible,” recalls Ioanna Khmelevskaya about her work on the novel “Les” “. “In rare moments of stagnation, I begged for a typewriter from our secretary and created, while my colleagues stood behind me and died laughing.” You and I are given the opportunity to laugh heartily, dear reader, because over the course of six years of work on the novel, one thing was created one of the brightest and, perhaps, the most ironic work of the master. The main character - Les - is in no way inferior to Mrs. Joanna in the ability to get into situations that are absolutely fantastic in their absurdity, regularly drags his colleagues into extraordinary adventures (sometimes criminal), not allowing the team of the architectural workshop and for a day to slip into the whirlpool of monotonous gray everyday life. The most unusual thing is that the novel turned out to be prophetic: Les began to seriously engage in painting after the publication of the work of Ioanna Khmelevskaya, who was the first to recognize the talent of an impressionist in him and told the world about it. At first, who called Ioanna’s creation a lampoon, now Les considers him a kind of talisman, and the dust jacket of the first edition appears at every opening day of the artist.Copyright© Ioanna Chmielewska, “Lesio”, 1973