The works of Pyotr Aleshkovsky are always distinguished by a sharp plot and an originally mastered literary tradition, be it a “Gothic novel”, a fairy tale, a historical narrative or a Russian realistic story with its close attention to the “little man”. The new book includes the widely known “Biography of a Ferret” - the story of a young man from a small provincial town who is trying to build his destiny despite all the horror and predetermination of a “mundane” existence; and the new prose “The Seventh Suitcase” - a series of stories from the author’s family tree, subtly permeated with the reflection of the hero himself - the narrator. In an effort to understand the vicissitudes of his own fate, he brings to life “saving shadows.”