This is the third and final book in Vladimir Voynovich's anecdote novel, 'The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin.' The war ended, the novel's hero was imprisoned as a deserter. He escaped, moved to Germany, and by a twist of fate ended up in America, where he lived for a long time and spent twelve years happily married. At the end of the novel, he, an American, returned to the USSR and visited his first love, the woman who had helped him so much during the war, unsuccessfully awaiting letters from him from the front, writing letters to herself, supposedly from him, and reading them to her neighbors. And he, already at an advanced age, came to her in the Union, wearing American jeans, which were then outlandish for Soviet people...

'History is such a thing, it is such a box, it is such a camera obscura, full of such burning secrets that when you learn them, even some of them, it simply takes your breath away, your head spins and your tongue dries up. And you shake your head and think: no, this can't possibly be. But it can, it can, it very well can. To be.'
Vladimir Voynovich