The new book by Gogol Prize winner Sofia Sinitskaya includes two stories – "The System of Colonel Smolov and Major Perov" and "Grisha Nedokvasov". The first tells about the life and death of the Leningrad Tsvetkov family, who incredibly had to survive the war twice. The second is the story of the actor and puppet master Nedokvasov, accused of involvement in the murder of Kirov and exiled to Pechorlag together with the doll Petrushka, where he shows performances to the little enemies of the people.An elegant, and sometimes wonderful mixture of tragedy and phantasmagoria, as a result of which the villain can turn into a hero, and the ordinary – a dark fairy tale, coupled with an unusual, but stylistically accurate manner of narration makes these stories unpredictable, bright and convincing in their singularity.