Somebody's Past Life

To say that Semyon Kaminsky is an emigrant writer, you don't need to read his biography. It is enough to read at least one of his stories. But it is hardly possible to stop at just one. He writes fascinatingly, in a charming kind of confessional prose.

His current book deserves the most serious attention. It cannot be called modernism in literature, and the author did not aspire to it. However, against the background of numerous examples of literature of similar orientation, this book stands out. There are no complaints about hard times, bad life, incomprehensible people, power and history. But there is a lot of nostalgia for the time when trees were big, for childhood, for the city, for the country, for the people, for long-forgotten little things. The author talks about sitting in the courtyards of the still Soviet Dnepropetrovsk with irony, not hiding his cheerful, optimistic nature. He lovingly describes the people living there, their way of thinking and acting. He shares with us his reflections on what his friends were like and what they have become. Together with him we sympathize with them, because, like S. Kaminsky, we find in them. Kaminsky, we find in them something elusively close. Together with the characters, we experience the hard times of the collapse of the USSR and find a reason to smile.

The peculiar mores of America are keenly observed by the author, but in the text you will not find snobbery or prejudice-just the opinion of a person like you.