The joke of the philanthropist

The heroes of the remarkable Russian writer Arkady Timofeevich Averchenko (1881-1925) are the townsfolk of the big city, with their absurdity, stupidity, mediocrity, swagger and bourgeois values. He had an amazing ability to invent witty plots, create a lot of funny situations, dialogs and improvisations. The book includes stories related to different periods of his work: the cycle “On the Little - for Bolshoi” and “Five Episodes from the Life of Beregov”, as well as the story “Heldowns and two others”, in the main characters of which a clear resemblance to characters and external The appearance of friends of the writer is Satyriconsev. “The joke of the philanthropist” is a novel both cheerful and sad, penetrated by nostalgia for a carefree bohemian Petersburg life - the last work of Averchenko, published in Prague in 1925 after his death