Maxim Osipov is a cardiologist, author and editor of many medical books, and has been working at the Tarusa Hospital in recent years. Since 2007, he has been publishing his journalism and prose in the magazine “Znamya”, becoming a laureate of this magazine’s prize. Osipov’s essays about today’s Russian province, especially “In the Native Land,” have become widely known and have become the reason for heated discussion in the press and on the Internet. These essays, humane and merciless, open the collection, which continues with a conversation about public service and ends with two stories. The main themes of the three-part story “Meeting” - love, art, choice of the spiritual path - are linked, as in a classical sonata. The story “Rock, Scissors, Paper” tells about the alien nature of the Russian authorities, about the ultimate power of Islam and the fragile beauty of Christian culture. The effect produced by Maxim Osipov’s prose is best conveyed by the description of one of Tolstoy’s characters: he says “although not quite by the way, but simple things that make sense.”