About the book: year / Efim Dorosh devoted about twenty years of his life to the "Village Diary", which became widely known among readers and was highly appreciated by our critics. A depiction of the life of an ancient Russian city on shore of the lake and its surrounding villages, acute modernity and deep penetration into the history of Russian culture, reflections on art - all this, uniquely combined, makes up the amazing uniqueness of this book. Its individual parts were published at different times in our publishing house, but united together under in one cover they are collected for the first time in the collection offered to the reader. To our deep regret, Efim Dorosh himself will not see it: he died on August 20, 1972. The uniqueness of this publication also lies in the fact that its design was made by Efim Dorosh’s friend, the artist T. Mavrina.