Say Raisin

One of the most famous novels by Vasily Aksenov. A mischievous, brilliantly written chronicle of the creation of a provocative photo album "Say Raisin!". In the conditions of Soviet reality, several photographers conceived the unthinkable: to combine their works and publish the resulting album bypassing censorship. Vigilant guardians of party ideology and "organs," in the novel - "glands," begin to pursue the diversants. Behind this captivating fantasy of Aksenov, one can easily discern the quite real story of the famous literary almanac "Metropol," whose authors dared to challenge the cornerstone of the regime - censorship, for which they paid dearly.
The prototypes of the heroic masters of the lens were quite real "metropolites," well-known writers and poets, including the author of the novel himself.

At Chistye Prudy, perhaps the last evening snow of the year fell beautifully. The Soviet authority was not in sight. He cleared the snow off the car's windows and suddenly experienced a forgotten and strange feeling of normalcy. A normal Moscow evening, a normal person clears snow from his car, just visited a friend who was dying normally, sat down, the car started normally, approached the traffic light normally with a little skid, the officer normally pointed with his stick to the roadside, normally asked for documents, inspected the car from all sides, returned the documents, saluted - be careful, it's freezing...
Vasily Aksenov