About the book: 1961 / The eleventh volume includes the novel "Straitjacket", the stories "John Barleycorn" and "The Scarlet Plague". The story "John Barleycorn" is the story of a man whose life is closely connected with alcohol - John Barleycorn. The taste of alcohol is disgusting to the hero, one way or another, being an oyster pirate, a simple worker in the States or traveling off the coast of Japan, he has to deal with Barley grain and consume it in huge quantities. And no matter how disgusting the taste of alcohol is, it makes you return to yourself again and again and gradually a person gets used to this addiction, and it will not be easy to get rid of the “friendship” of John Barleycorn. "Straitjacket" is a story about a man who was a professor of agronomy at an agricultural college. And now he sits in solitary confinement in a California prison for murder, sentenced to life in prison. It is impossible to escape from here, and almost the only entertainment is playing with ordinary flies. And for an offence, even if it’s just an invented one, it’s customary here to put the prisoner in a straitjacket and leave him like that for several hours, or even days. But it turns out that the human mind is not as connected with its physical body as it was in freedom... The story “The Scarlet Plague” tells how a young man and an old man wander along a deserted shore. In the distance, the young man notices dilapidated ruins and the old man begins a story about the majestic city whose towers once rose on this shore, about a mighty civilization and about the events that led to the fall of the world...