About the book: 1980 / There are many most unexpected bends, turns, random and strange in human destiny. Burshin, perhaps, would not have become a thief if not for such here's a random twist. He would have become a clerk, a waiter, or, at best, a mechanic, for which he had undoubted inclinations. Alexey Dudykin, the owner of a small workshop and hardware store on Teatralny Proezd in Moscow, also recognized his special inclination towards metalworking. But it seemed to Dudykin that the boy was extremely arrogant and disrespectful to his elders. And one day, after a short conversation, the owner lost his temper, kicked the boy out of the store and slapped him at the door. Burshin was ten years old. He sat on the cold steps of the Bolshoi Theater all day. He didn't know what to do, where to go. He was completely alone in a huge city. In the pocket of his canvas pants there were twenty kopecks.