With the cool gaze of his professional peers Chekhov and Bulgakov, the doctor and writer Maxim Ossipov observes his post-Soviet contemporaries: street vendors, Tajik guest workers, newly wealthy emigrants, former intelligence agents, and their capable children who have arrived in the new era, as well as passionate theater people and Jewish musicians. Most of his stories take place in Tarussa, a provincial town located a hundred kilometers from Moscow. However, we also get to know Moscow, accompany the author on a train journey through the interior of Russia, and follow him to Cape Cod or Berlin. Ossipov provides a deep insight into the completely unfamiliar Russian province: a life full of extremes, where instability, profound ugliness, and warmth coexist unexpectedly.