Annotation: The prose collected in Leonid Girshovich's book is a conversation about the experience of perpetual otherness and alienation, tied to the writer's biography yet transcending historical context. In the titular novella, the biography of Ivan Fedorov, the printer, narrated in two languages, serves as a basis for discussing the eternal confrontation between intellectuals and authority, as well as the author's own complex relationship with Russian history and culture. Other texts by the author take on the guise of notes, variations, or letters — behind this play with genres lies an attempt to view one's "self" from an ironic distance and to dissect what it comprises. Structured more like a musical composition than traditional linear prose, Leonid Girshovich's writing blends various elements in unusual proportions: provocation and stylistic sophistication, questions of identity, reflections on the future of humanity, and a subtle attentiveness to historical realities, both Soviet and European. Leonid Girshovich is a writer and musician, the author of novels and novellas including Exchanged Heads (1992), Price (1998), Viy: A Vocal Cycle by Schubert to Words by Gogol (2005), Fascism and the Opposite (2006), Schautbenacht (2006), The Mosaic of Small Deeds (2017), and Against Justice (2021).