About the book: year / “Several years ago I had to spend the summer in southern Germany, in Hesse-Nassau. From a dusty, hopeless white moderne resort you emerge onto high hills where, for the most part, a gray tower of spongy, weathered stone sticks out. Tourists climb in there, turn their noses up, admiring the views, and babble wild and unnecessary speeches about the surrounding landscapes in different languages. True, the country is rich, a fat country opens up from a mountain tower: grain pastures, red roofs of frequent wealthy villages, where a mill turns a giant wheel. The wheel sets in motion a piston that stretches across fields and hills, under the railway embankment for several kilometers. You walk along this piston, sit down and ride on it, fearfully looking around so that the cultured Germans do not drive the uncultured Russian off their piston…»