About the book: 1994 / This book consists of five texts, the genre of which is difficult to determine. To the three “Chapters from the Book of Life” (Carte Blanche, 1990) he had previously published, Mark Freidkin added two more texts - “Sketch of a Family Tree” written in the 80s and a new “Book about Nothing”. All genres are good, except boring, to which the works of Freidkin, gifted with an enviable sense of humor and narrative grace, obviously do not belong. If you still try to find the single pulse of his works, then, probably, it consists of a very special, but persistent combination of “truth” and “literature.”».