This book by Maria Stepanova collects texts written over the last decade, primarily focused on literature. In fact, the texts themselves are literature—for in Stepanova’s work, the line between the essay and other forms of prose is elusive. The book explores the experience of reading and writing—a process that transforms us, often against our will, and reinvents language through an ongoing dialogue with both the living and the dead. Simultaneously, it enacts a transformation in how we speak about literature and the world today. Whether Maria Stepanova is writing about contemporaries—such as Gennady Aygi or Grigory Dashevsky—or about predecessors—like Alexander Blok, Osip Mandelstam, Nadezhda Mandelstam, or Vladimir Vysotsky—her approach is always rooted in the "here and now." It is a reading shaped by our current circumstances, and for that reason, it resonates with anyone who takes the time to listen.

The cover design features a detail from an 18th-century painting by an unknown artist, titled "The Sage Valmiki Witnesses a Hunter Killing a Pair of Cranes" (National Museum, India).