The Homeless Man

The collection of modernist stories by Mikhail Veller, “I Want to Be a Janitor,” which was rejected by all editorial offices, was published in the Soviet Union for five years and caused a sensation. The author was admitted to the Union of Writers of the USSR on the recommendation of Boris Strugatsky and Bulat Okudzhava. In completely different genres, the bestselling books “Legends of Nevsky Prospect” and “The Adventures of Major Zvyagin” were created and have been reissued a hundredfold. The theory of energyevolutionism, first set out in Veller’s treatise “Everything About Life,” was awarded a medal from the World Philosophical Forum in Athens.

The new novel by Veller is written in the mainstream humanist tradition of Russian classics: the thirst for justice of the “humiliated and insulted.” Ironic mockery of the hypocrisy of the rich and a sigh over the adventures of the poor. The story of the life of a homeless man, written by himself—who he was, how he reached such a state, how he survives. Day-to-day tricks and techniques he uses to not die. Along the way—stories about the people around him, individuals much like him, about how they turned into refuse. And all of it—because Veller could not be Veller otherwise—is diluted with the sharpest criticism of our reality, deliberately placed by the writer into the mouths of the characters.