About the book: year / I. Grekova’s book “On Tests” contains her most famous works, published over the years in magazines and newspapers. Sometimes the year of publication does not coincide with the year of writing: for example, the story “Masters of Life,” written in 1960, was published only in 1988. In the works of the writer, the psychologism traditional for Russian literature and the interweaving of moral and “business” issues are enriched with a precise sense of the present day, the freshness of calm, clear and ironic writing, relevant for the “urban” prose of the 1960s–1970s, sharpening the everyday life conflicts of the “ordinary” person. Grekova’s subsequent work (which often caused heated discussions and even accusations of “slander”) developed in this direction, dedicated as a well-known writer to the scientific and technical environment, incl. military intelligentsia (stories On Testing, 1967, Department, 1978; novels Thresholds, 1984, Fresh Tradition, published in 1995), and everyday stories of people of different professions, uniquely continuing the theme of the “little” man in Russian literature (stories Little Garusov, 1970, The Hostess of the Hotel, 1976, The Widow's Steamboat, 1981, Pheasant, 1985, The Turning Point, 1987; stories Masters of Life, 1960, Rothschild's Violin, 1981, Without Smiles, 1986). Characteristic is the writer’s desire to connect even a chamber narrative about fictional characters with important, sometimes tragic events in the life of the country.I. Grekova is the literary pseudonym of Elena Sergeevna Ventzel (1907–2002), Soviet mathematician, author of textbooks on probability theory and operations research, Doctor of Technical Sciences (1954), professor (1955).