In the autobiographical prose of Mikhail Aizenberg, the usual tasks of this genre—narrating the origin and development of the author, portraying the environment and era, and finding a personal formula for the grand narrative—reveal a distinct secondary, metaphysical layer.

Thus, the story of one's own life, its events, and characters transforms into a narrative of searching for a point of support and methods of resistance against social evil, existential despair, the irreversible passage of time, and the omnipresent void.