The collection of essays by a prominent writer, poet, playwright and literary historian Oleg Jurjew. It is focused on a great but still neglected tradition of Russian literature in the 20th century represented by Tikhon Churilin, Pavel Salzman, Vsevolod Petrov, Boris Vakhtin, Vladimir Gubin et al. which the author tries to bring back to life. His attention is also attracted by the writers existing on the cultural and language borders, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Paul Celan or Sholem Aleichem. The last part of the book deals with the time and place of the author’s formation – Leningrad in the 1970s–1980s.