The life of the bureaucrat Zhernov consists of four primary elements: an office full of vexing subordinates, two bottles of port consumed after work, conversations with a cleaning woman, and office trysts with the amorous Dina.

Boris Dyshlenko—a star of the Leningrad underground and recipient of the Andrei Bely Prize—takes this "black square" and playfully stretches it across twenty years of Soviet and Russian history, only to demonstrate that, despite all the "societal processes" at play, absolutely nothing changes in the lives of either the protagonist or the nation.

In this cycle of stories—published here in its entirety for the first time—Dyshlenko reveals himself not only as a virtuoso of dry, humorous prose but also as an heir to Beckett and Kafka.