Sergey Dovlatov is one of the most popular and widely read Russian writers of the late 20th - early 21st centuries. His stories, short stories, and notebooks have been translated into many languages, filmed, and studied in schools and universities. Dovlatov's surprisingly funny and at the same time piercingly sad prose has long become a classic and makes the writer akin to such masters of tragicomic prose as A. Chekhov, Teffi, A. Averchenko, and M. Zoshchenko.

Dovlatov's 'Zone' is fourteen episodes from the lives of prisoners and their guards, stories of the coexistence of people behind barbed wire, told simply and with sobering humor, behind which one can quite clearly hear: 'Hell is ourselves.'