Valentin Kataev’s book "My Diamond Crown" is openly polemical. Against a broad historical and literary backdrop, the writer traces the fates of many of his fellow writers.
“Not a novel, not a short story, not a novella, not a poem, not memoirs, not a memoir book, not a lyrical diary… But what then? I don’t know.” This quote from Kataev removes many of the questions that might arise in the reader. By offering a “substitution of chronological connections with associative ones,” the author asserts his style—what he considers to be a new form.