About the book: 1999 / Youth is a time when you are filled with romance and believe in the incredible. When the world, which has not pulled you into its terrible and uncomfortable embrace, seems alien and distant, and the images of brave musketeers, adventurers, hussars, dashing pirates and robbers are so alive. When you and your friends are united by a common train of thought, reckless lightness and a thirst for the strange. Flourishing? Yes. You go to school and sit through tedious and boring classes that don’t teach you anything. You pass by people with sad and angry faces. Three friends are writing an adventure novel, reading the memoirs of Napoleon and Talleyrand, and reading Dumas and Kirk Monroe. They live their lives to the fullest, misbehave, go to reenactment clubs... They are full of hopes and dreams, live in a world of ideal people they have created and do not want to accept, they mock the dull reality of Leningrad. Unfortunately, life often “combs” everyone with the same brush . Most idealists are hopelessly broken under this shroud and turn into nothing. Others fade and turn into a pitiful semblance of their former selves, neatly fitting into the surrounding social... “Rusty arrowheads and clay shards do not excite my imagination, and I look at them without feeling any tenderness.”... Is this the only thing possible? And yet... “A broken cage, a handful of ashes, and a crane - again in the clouds”... After all, the prodigal son from Rembrandt’s painting returned to his beautiful canvas, created by a genius, disfigured, but alive. There is hope. The world of dreams is always within us.