Love in the time of COVID

The new book of the famous St. Petersburg writer Valery Popov, a laureate of the Big Book Prize, consists of two stories united by a figure of a lyrical hero. In the first story, the author immerses the reader in the recent past, recalling the fate of his cousins, with whom, in addition to the knight of kinship, he was connected by the bonds of selfless friendship for life. The characters of the second story, on the contrary, are acutely worried about the topic of today, fears and hopes caused by the circumstances of the epidemic. The author’s ironic intonation is alien to Paphos, the cartoon of everyday circumstances are so dramatic, so comical. The narrator allows himself to laugh from himself from the height of the years lived, giving him wisdom, which, alas, is always adjacent to sadness