Aleksandr Pankratov-Chyornyy

Ivan Mirosnikov, a cheeky young man in the Gorbachev era, is trying to figure out what to do with his life (he's not in college, and the 2-year mandatory military service is looming large ahead of him). Meanwhile, he lives with his divorced mother, and works as a courier at a Russian newspaper. Through his job, he meets patronizing Professor Kuznetzov and his rebellious daughter Katya. To annoy the professor, Ivan claims to have an affair with Katya. To his surprise, Katya backs his story up.

A determined student from Chicago is forced to fulfill the last wish of his ailing grandfather. He has to travel to Odessa, Ukraine, and bring back his grandfather's cat.

In Russia, there has long been a society of billiards, whose members are scattered throughout the country. Many of them have long become millionaires. And they should thank the old school teachers for this. Most of these old people live starving and lonely. In order to somehow brighten up their old age, the new generation of billiards decided to chip in and give their teachers a big mansion, where there will be decent food, good medical care and fresh air. No one refused his share of the contribution, except for an authority by the name of Savitsky. Soon, he completely changes his mind and organizes an ambush on the road, takes away not only his own money, but also his total money. The barely surviving couriers report this to all members of the community. The group comes up with a decent punishment by sending him a professional pool player nicknamed Classic. The bandit will have to fight with a virtuoso who prefers to play for large sums in order to save money.

This life period of the main character Felix (L. Lutvinsky) coincides with rather complicated period of country history Chernenko dies, Gorbachev succeeds him, then Ligachev criticizes Eltsin, county is reined by deficit, backstairs influence, queues, war in Afghanistan Having invented nothing better, electrical engineer escapes from reality and becomes a street cleaner. He is a kind of going underground, locking himself in a stuffy cleaners box room and pretending that nothing arouses his interest.

An escaped prisoner, breaking the laws of hospitality, kills the dog of a boy whose grandfather gave him shelter. He placed a sharp piece of metal in a piece of meat. The police arrived and shot the dog. The boy grew into a small, pitiful, absurd, side-eyed man, who froze his genital organs while rescuing a dog, unable to have children, which his wife complains about very much. He works as a driver. While transporting a white piano from the collective farm to the club, he turns off the road so as not to run over the sheep, and the car falls into the river. A white puppy follows him everywhere and creepy and funny stories constantly happen. But he lives his dreams, writes poetry, his only friends are dogs - he gets kicked out of work, his wife leaves him. The real trouble comes - war.

The story about a very small god-forgotten village in Siberia reflects the history of Russia from the beginning of the century till the early 1980s. Three generations try to find the land of happiness and to give it to the people. One builds the road through taiga to the star over horizon, the second 'build communism' and the third searches for oil.

In the town of Bryakhimov, noble but poor widow Harita Ignatyevna Ogudalova seeks to arrange marriages for her three daughters. She maintains an “open house”, hoping to attract gentlemen well-off enough to marry a dowry-less girl for love.