The Funeral of My Little Star was awarded the Grand Prix – the highest award in the nomination “Prose” of the International Slavic Literary Forum “Golden Knight” (Pyatigorsk, Russia, 2018). The Funeral of My Little Star is the first part of the Alexandropol Trilogy. And at the same time – an independent, whole autobiographical story. This is a very insidious genre, especially when it’s a first-person narration – on the verge of narcissism, on the verge of shamelessness, on the verge of ascribing the “I” to the main characters. But the amazing thing is that in this book the author managed to bring completely different characters into focus. He is present in every line – but as a translator, as a photo album, as a box with family heirlooms, as faded ink on an old envelope.

And who is the main character then? The City. Its codex and calico, not compromising even in the face of death. Its language, which does not know the word “compromise” at all, but fully replaces it with gratitude and care. A language in which a loaf of brown bread is equal to love. A language in which the “artisan” sounds more proud than the “man.” The main character is a rhizome-city. Its history and inhabitants. Its history is in its inhabitants and vice versa – because they are interpenetrating, not separable from one another. Even leaving, flying away, throwing shoots in other worlds – it is impossible to break away from one’s root and stay alive.

The main character is an immortal city. Despite the tragedies, disasters, and the personal little grief of each of its families. A city in which “...there is only reality and light; there is no darkness, no death ...” There is laughter and no pathos at all. And in this sense, the book is an ideal guide, a clear imprint of the “shoe of Alexandropol size.”