About the book: 2005 / The stories included in this book take the reader back to the recent, but already so distant past. Lyrical fragments and funny, bittersweet stories form a picture of the era, becoming a kind of “witness testimony.” A brilliant prose writer and subtle stylist, Vera Kobets paints her picture masterfully and soulfully. As we know, history repeats itself twice. For the first time, Hemingway's peers were called the Lost Generation. Half a century later, a similar fate befell those who were late to the thaw and did not breathe a “breath of freedom” in their youth. This is our lost generation... What is more in their lives - tragedy or farce? How did they cope with the stopped “running of time”? The book “The Sweet Life of the Age of Stagnation” is a unique attempt to answer these questions. Vera Kobets is a prose writer, translator, orientalist by training, published since the late 80s. According to critics, in her prose one can feel “the long-forgotten flavor of Nabokov and Bunin... the joy of touching the authentic, embracing from the first pages and not letting go until the end».