About the book: 1911 / It was 12 o’clock on a cheerful sunny day. In a large room with two windows decorated with tulle curtains on gilded cornices, at a table on which a pot-bellied nickel-plated samovar was boiling, there was a coffee pot and all the breakfast utensils, sat the widow of the state councilor, Anfisa Kondratyevna Kutsoveeva, and her daughter, Sofochka.