This memoir by the widow of the renowned writer Yuli Daniel covers the period from the 1960s to the 1980s. During the years of stagnation, theaters, art workshops, and magazines became centers of attraction for the intelligentsia. One such magazine was "Decorative Art of the USSR," where Irina Uvarova worked during those years. She reminisces about the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial, the artist Boris Birger's circle (Bulat Okudzhava, Vladimir Voynovich, actors from the Taganka Theater), Sergei Parajanov, Mikhail Bakhtin, and the theatrical experiments of that era.
Irina Uvarova is a production designer, art historian, and theater theorist. In the mid-1980s, together with Viktor Novatsky, she contributed to the revival of the traditional puppet nativity scene; in the early 1990s, she founded the magazine "Kukart," which has had a significant influence on the aesthetics of contemporary puppet theater.