After leaving the Soviet Union in 1975, Zinovy ​ ​ Zinik was able to visit Russia again only fifteen years later. During his three decades in England, Zinik published seven novels and three collections of short stories translated into different languages ​ ​ of the world, gaining a strong writing reputation among both British and Russian readers. In this collection of essays (from the late 70s until recently) the reader will find not only a detailed and fascinating analysis of the literary situation outside Russia - from the era of the Iron Curtain to our days of open borders, but also memoirs about Zinik's personal meetings with old Moscow friends in the new territory and with such classic names of the twentieth century, like Anthony Burgess and Francis Bacon, about polemical clashes with the Nabokov family and about ideological confrontation with Salman Rushdie. This book is about the dialectic of the writer's relationship outside the homeland with another culture.