Kirill Kobrin is a writer and historian. Author of over three dozen books and numerous publications in European and Eastern languages. Co-founder and co-editor of the literary and artistic online project post(non)fiction. Writes in Russian and English. Lives somewhere in Europe.

A collection of essays by Kirill Kobrin is about people of their word, in both senses of this expression. His heroes are writers, or those who, at least briefly, as volunteers, looked into the writer's workshop. All of them - despite historical, gender, class, any differences - knew how to keep their word, at least in the most important cases related to what they wanted to say, putting words on paper/screen. The heroes of Kobrin's new book lived in different times, from the 4th to the 21st century AD, in a variety of countries, from the Celestial Empire to the United Kingdom. Their methods of life and writing were also very different, but something common still shines through the motley circumstances of these people's lives. Kobrin tries to find this common in his essays. He writes about Xavier de Maistre, Tao Yuanming, Li Miller, George Orwell, Michelle Bernstein, Mark Fisher, V.G. Sebald and many others, unknown, forgotten and not yet forgotten, still known.