About the book: 1960 / Few people in the city knew where and how Leonty Arkhipkin, nicknamed Gramophone, lost his voice. And there were even fewer who had ever heard and remembered this voice. For forty years now, Leonty Arkhipkin has been speaking in a hoarse and rough whisper, constantly coughing and humming strangely, like a gramophone whose record has run out, but the stray needle is still scratching the circle, dangling from side to side. However, the Trans-Volga elders assured that there was a time when the voice of Leonty Arkhipkin thundered throughout the Volga, on the Middle and Lower reaches, from Nizhny to Astrakhan. Arkhipkin’s name was then not Gramophone, but Thunderbolt - his bass was so menacing and exorbitant.