Annotation: One may think of this book as of “one more of these biographic studies on Marc Chagall”, and one would be formally right but at the same time essentially mistaken. Indeed, it’s all about Chagall’s life and creative work, but viewed through a polygonal prism of Chagall’s specific relations with his beloved hometown of Vitebsk – the town that could neither accept him, neither understand. Thorough work with unique archive materials together with the keen eye of a true scholarly writer have enabled Victor Martynovich to create a series of vivid and paradoxical pictures of Chagall’s life framed by the context of drastic historical and ideological twists that shaped the town’s face, soul and history. See Chagall in nostalgic pre-War provincial surroundings taking his first steps in art guided by Jegudah Pan – the only master of all whom he truly considered to be his teacher. See him back to Vitebsk in 1918 holding the position of an art commissar, commissioned by Lunacharsky himself, making preparations for the celebration of the first anniversary of the October Revolution. See him being banished from the townsfolk’s agenda shortly afterwards and joining the ranks of outcasts for the rest of his life and even after death, and still decorating the plafonds of Parisian Opéra Garnier with the images of Vitebsk wooden fences in 1970-ies. Such deliberately narrowed and locally-focused approach transfigures (sometimes even turns upside down) the established perception of prominent avant-gardists such as Kazimir Malevich, El Lisitsky, Vladimir Mayakovsky and others. Describing case after case, the author draws the half-tragic, half-comical picture of local denial of a world’s genius throughout the twentieth century.