Anatoly Pristavkin was a true professional, a master of words; according to many, all of his prose was written with the highest degree of authenticity. He was and, of course, remains a living voice of his time... of our time... In the documentary biographical short stories “Drunken Heart Syndrome”, the author recalls Yuri Kazakov, Adolf Shapiro, Ales Adamovich, Alexei Kapler and many others he met on the “wine road”. The book also includes one of his last stories, “The Golden Executioner.” “And when they say about Russia that it has “drunken heart syndrome,” this is also true. Although I'm not sure I can explain what it is. Whole-of-the-day drinking? Probably. An uncontrollable attraction of the population, young and old, to a bottle of alcohol? And that. This is also there. And a severe hangover, ending with a new, even more violent and hopeless surrender? Ugorelovka? The honest truth. But there are some strange gaps between the disastrous fall: and a feeling of guilt, before everyone and oneself, a feeling of repentance, sincere, on the verge of despair and hope, and a prophetic, there is no other way to say it, sensation of this world, which is still more sorry than for himself, because he, too, is sliding into the abyss... Hence, forgiveness and the desire to give the last, although there is not much of it left. In a word, the syndrome of a drunk, but of the heart!” Anatoly Pristavkin