Annotation:

Renowned philologist Alexander Zholkovsky has managed to create his own original metaliterary genre—the vignette as a fragmentary, fictionalized, free memoir. The author has complied in one place several dozen vignettes that were previously scattered across the Internet and print media, and he has added two new stories to them. Famous cultural heroes (Nadezhda Mandelstam, Umberto Eco, Yuri Shcheglov, Omry Ronen) participate in this book on equal terms with long-lost acquaintances, students of the philological faculty of Moscow State University, medical workers, and characters from social networks. From these scattered yet witty notes are formed an amazing mosaic of personal fate in a great age, a comedy of morals, and the drama of life.