American triumph of the writer. This book was created over two decades: work on the first part was carried out in the 1970s in Leningrad, on the second - already in exile, in the USA, a decade later. Portraits of different people, everyday sketches, reflections on life, country and time, like a puzzle, add up to a single picture of the world. Some will find these memoirs bitter, while others will find them very funny. Dovlatov's worldview is so multifaceted that there can be several readings.