Inventor

Valery Popov – prose writer, memoirist, author of books "Life is Successful", "Ink Angel", "The Mosquito Lives While It Sings", "Dancing Until Death", "Dovlatov" (in the series "ZhZL"); a representative of the Leningrad sixties; was acquainted with Andrei Bitov, Sergei Dovlatov, Joseph Brodsky, Viktor Golyavkin, Vladimir Ufand.
In Popov's books – there is always grotesque and fantasy, his texts are called "bright, absolutely personal, unique in texture".

"The Paradise at the Tip of the Pen" – a book about the magical connection between literature and life. The acquaintance of the heroes of this book with a miserable writer involuntarily makes them think: are they moving towards a worthy conclusion or towards disgrace? And the author himself seems not to disappoint, to show himself.
Life creates literature – but literature also shapes reality".
Valery Popov

"Under the gaze of Valery Popov, the blissful reality suddenly emerges into a different, inaccessible level of intensity. The stream of life absorbs and neutralizes randomness. Having come to this discovery in his youth, Popov did not renounce it, even when happiness ceased to be inevitable. The beam of light from Popov's early books reaches his later works, like the radiation of an unextinguished star".

Alexander GENIS

3 reasons to buy this book:
1. Autobiographical material. Life through the eyes of a writer. Inspiration, a charge of optimism and love of life. The author invariably manages to see the comic in the terrible and the bright in the sad.
2. Bright and precise language, full of grotesque metaphors and amazing images.
3. Unusual episodes from the lives of famous people. The reader will learn why poet Vladimir Ufand was radiant, what the balls and Golyavkin's stories have in common, and why Dovlatov walked along Suvorovsky Avenue in home slippers.