The Life and Unusual Adventures of Soldier Ivan Chonkin. Book 3. The Displaced Person

Before you is the third, final book of the anecdotal novel by Vladimir Voinovich «The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Soldier Ivan Chonkin». The war is over, the hero of the novel, as a deserter, was imprisoned, he escaped, made his way to Germany, and by the will of fate ended up in America, where he lived for a long time and spent twelve years in a happy marriage. At the end of the novel, he, an American, came to the USSR and visited his first love, the woman who had helped him a lot during the war, who unsuccessfully awaited letters from him from the front, wrote letters to herself supposedly from him, and read them to her neighbors. And he, already of advanced age, arrived to her in the Union in those exotic American jeans that were so unusual to Soviet people at the time… History is such a thing, it is such a box, it is such a camera obscura, full of such burning secrets that when you learn them, at least some of the separate ones, it takes your breath away, your head spins, and your tongue goes dry. And you shake your head and think: no, this cannot be. But it can, it can, very much so. Be.