I Don't Want to Be a Simple Person: Diaries, Prose, Letters

The Moscow period of Limonov in the lifetime editions of his multi-volume autofictional biography is outlined only in brief. Kharkiv, New York, Paris are described in detail, while he mentions «Moscow» only in passing – in separate stories and journalism. Meanwhile, it is here that the provincial avant-garde poet transformed into the very Limonov we know – the fearless literary hooligan who made his own biography the main material of his books. The struggle with poverty, immersion in the capital's bohemia, a passionate romance with Shchapova, and finally, emigration — all of this fit into a few swift Moscow years.
The texts collected in this book allow us to see how in the early diaries and first prose the very personality crystallized that was destined to explode Russian literature a few years later.