Because of his gigantic height and physical power, many saw in him a strong personality, and behind the mask-like image – ...a sybarite and a cynic

"…I'm not sure that I consider myself a writer. I would like to consider myself a storyteller" (from "Interview with Viktor Yerofeyev").

Sergei Donatovich Dovlatov (1941-1990). His "lovely verbal rubbish, turned into elegant literature" (Lev Losev, 1937–2009) can be found at the RUDN University Library by opening "Collected Prose in Three Volumes" (1995). The compiler – a friend of Sergei Dovlatov from their student days, editor of the magazine "Zvezda", Andrei Yuryevich Aryev – notes: "Sergei was inclined to stop and chat with almost anyone who was ready for it… and even thought of naming one of his books with a line from Mark Twain – 'I stopped to chat with Huckleberry Finn'"

"The Collection" is illustrated in a style consonant with Twain's characters. The dust jackets of the volumes were decorated by Alexander Florensky (art group "Mitki") with whimsical images of Leningrad, Tallinn, and New York. Real maps of the cities where the writer lived and worked are pasted on the endpapers.

"The most important things in the hero's life are told by Dovlatov in a genre and style long known as 'trip' (chatter)": continues Professor of RUDN University Anatoly Sergeevich Karpov (1935-2021) ("Selected Works", 2004 and "In a Foreign Land", 2007). The simplicity and precision of the narrative contributed to the fact that Dovlatov's books were published abroad both in Russian and in translations into English, Danish, German, Swedish, Finnish, Japanese...

He did not live to see the publication of his books in his homeland. Before you is the first book by Sergei Dovlatov published in our country – "The Suitcase" (1991) with a friendly caricature of Joseph Brodsky on the cover.