Novellas of My Life

This book is not a memoir, although Natalia Sats recalls a lot about many people. "A journey through the episodes of one life, stops by interesting people" – this is how she defined the genre of her "Novellas". An unusual... genre, about which nothing is said in textbooks on literary studies.
Natalia Sats herself was an unusual person.
She was born in the early 20th century, "still under the tsar," and lived through the complex and sometimes terrifying 20th century almost to its very end. And she did not just live – she endured all the trials, stood firm, and did not give up. Everything she dreamed of came true: the name Natalia Sats is carried by the children's and youth theater she founded in Almaty and the unique, unparalleled in the world Children's Musical Theater in Moscow on Vernadsky Avenue.
"Since childhood, I was taught to notice the interesting in every person. … Anthropology of man! What a necessary science it is! … In the art of theater, without it, you can't create anything, you can't lead others".
Everyone who reads this book will see the author's keen interest in the people around her, her attention to them, her attempts to decipher each one, to notice their uniqueness, their differences. And the people whom Natalia Sats met on her "journey through life" are just as extraordinary, interesting, and vibrant as she is; she only involved such people in her orbit. These include Paustovsky and Einstein, Stanislavsky and Mikhail Koltsov, Alexei Tolstoy and Sergey Prokofiev, and many, many others.
"Novellas of My Life" is a fascinating read: it is a document of the era, a story about people and events, and most importantly, the life story of Natalia Sats herself, a story that is a hundred times more interesting than any novel.