Sergei Dovlatov was born in evacuation and died in exile. He developed as a writer in Leningrad, but success came to him in America, where he lived since 1979. His artistic idea, despite the apparent paradox, justified by life experience, is simple and noble: to tell how strange people live - sometimes laughing sadly, sometimes laughing funny. There are no righteous people in his books, because there are no villains in them either. The writer knows: both heaven and hell are within ourselves. Dovlatov believed in one thing—the “smile of reason.” This dignified, restrained position brought Sergei Dovlatov widespread fame at the end of the second millennium. Alas, he died just at the moment when fame approached his bedside. In his homeland for ten years now, Dovlatov has been one of the most consistently read authors. His prose has been dramatized, filmed, studied in schools and universities, translated into major European and Japanese languages... Sergei Dovlatov said that he only wants to be like Chekhov. Well, remaining himself, more than anyone else from his literary generation, he looks like a Russian classic today.