Nobody will get anything for nothing

Sergey Soloukh is a Russian prose writer and publicist, known not only for his novels, stories, and essays but also for his long-term research on the life and works of Jaroslav Hašek. It is no coincidence that the Comments on... the Russian translation of Jaroslav Hašek's novel “The Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk” by Sergey Soloukh has become one of the bestsellers in the literary commentary genre both in book format and in the electronic sea of the internet. The new book by Sergey Soloukh, which the reader holds in their hands, is a happy departure from all and any genre boundaries. It is a mosaic of letters by Jaroslav Hašek and Jarmila Mayerová, translated into Russian for the first time, along with a story about the life and circumstances in which these amazing messages emerged. On one hand, it is an extraordinarily touching tale of two hopelessly in love people, interesting literally to everyone, and on the other hand, it is a completely original and yet equally understandable literary scholarly text, explaining out of which life material the famous novel by Jaroslav Hašek about the good soldier Švejk came to be. This is the first complete book version of the original text by Sergey Soloukh. The abridged version was published in the journal Novy Mir in early 2022 and immediately entered the honorary long list of the Big Book Prize. Thus, in your hands is one of the forty-eight best books of this year, according to experts of the largest and most prestigious literary prize in Russia.