On the sunny side of the street

The popular TV series was based on Dina Rubina's novel "On the Sunny Side of the Street," with the main roles played by Alexander Domogarov, Sergey Makovetsky, and Anna Snatkina. It all starts with the story of Katya - a girl dying of hunger during the siege of Leningrad. Katya is saved thanks to evacuation to the relatively safe Tashkent, which became a second home for thousands of Soviet citizens fleeing the Nazi invasion. As a young woman, Katya finds herself in the criminal environment of Tashkent, becomes a talented con artist, and "works" in the Tashkent markets. Later, she gives birth to a daughter, Vera, out of wedlock. Little Vera is unaware of her mother's business... She grows up surrounded by people of different nationalities - Russians, Uzbeks, Jews, Ukrainians... One day she saves a drunkard, whom she calls Uncle Misha, and he recognizes her artistic talent and begins to develop it. Later, Vera survives the devastating Tashkent earthquake of 1966 and becomes a world-famous artist. The whimsical fates of the novel's characters intertwine in a "high-voltage" plot of love and crime, talent and passion capable of destroying a person or elevating them to the heights of creativity. Open this novel - and you will be captivated by a truly Babylonian gathering of characters: urban madmen and alcoholics, Russian nobles, exiles and former prisoners, "white colonizers" and "hashish hunters"...