About the book: 2024 / From the author to the reader The book consists of fourteen stories. The stories are written in an emphatically grotesque presentation. There is a combination of the tragic and the sublime, the funny and the ordinary, with sharply comedic situations and a fair amount of self-irony. The stories take place in Nizhny Novgorod, Sevastopol, the Mediterranean Sea, Leningrad, Kronstadt and Vladikavkaz during the period of developed socialism and its sudden decline. The author provides a broad, comprehensive analysis of the service of officers in the USSR Navy and in everyday life conditions in a deliberately humorous portrayal, which makes the book interesting for a wide range of readers.