This story began in the eighties of the last century. Two talented and ambitious people entered Leningrad University at the most prestigious and “closed” faculty - Oriental Studies. The elite of Soviet diplomacy was trained here, the very people who were supposed to worthily represent the USSR in the countries of Africa and Asia. And that is why most of the students who studied at the faculty were men, including the main character of the novel, Evgeniy. The bulk of the students were children of diplomats and ambassadors working in “eastern” countries. Many of them grew up in the very countries whose language they studied at university. Another part of the faculty students were the children of famous and popular people in the country: artists, writers, politicians. They went to study at the Eastern Faculty because of the prestige. And the remaining small percentage was made up of “everyone else,” that is, people like the heroine of the novel, Vera, who suddenly decided to change their karma and, instead of enrolling in the Faculty of Philology and then teaching English at school, become a diplomat, consul or journalist - internationalist. Having drawn the lucky ticket, Vera and Zhenya began to study Indian and Chinese. And everything was fine until, in the year of their release, “perestroika” happened in the country and not only joint ventures and firms appeared, but also those who began to be called “bandits”...