The present collection is named after a story by the distinguished Soviet writer Yuri Nagibin. In it the main character, a scientist, finds a means against the 20th century most terryfing disease, cancer. This discovery turns out to be the experimentor's "peak of success", a stroke of luck that can only come once in a lifetime. However, despite his greatest achievement of a scientist, he is extremely unhappy, even helpless, before the tragedy of his personal life which is pivot of Nagibin's story.
This collection also contains one of the most brilliant of Mikhail Bulgakov's satirical stories "The Fateful Eggs", Alexei Tolstay's and Andrei Platonov's novellas written between 1920s and 1930s, as well as short stories by the contemporary Soviet writers Vassili Shukshin, Andrei Bitov, Vladimir Makanin anf Chinghis Aitmatov.
Each of the stories in this book is a masterly blending of the real and the fantastic , a fascinating and potent mixture od wit, fantasy and satire which cannot fail to engage the reader.  

źródło opisu: Raduga Publishers, 1991
źródło okładki: Zdjęcie autorskie