Chronicles of a Speculator. In Search of Lost Antiques

All the stories collected in this amazing audio book are absolutely true. In addition, the author tried to make them funny and engaging—and he succeeded. And after all, each one smells not only of showmanship in the spirit of Ostap Bender, but also of real crime! Sometimes the author himself is surprised that, in Soviet times—back when he was a dealer in scarce art collectibles—and now as a respected expert in rarities and antiques, he managed to become involved in such strange events.

The listener is allowed to peek into the kitchen of speculation on valuable aesthetic objects and to see from the inside many unusual and instructive things from the lives of collectors, art scholars, madmen, oddballs, swindlers, and fraudsters. The book is read in one sitting. Arkady Shvartszer is a person with an unusual fate: an antiques dealer, an art expert, a passionate bibliophile, and a public artist in Russia.

“Reading the book is very easy; the style is amusing; the plots are dizzying—and, most importantly, we are presented with pure truth about the USSR. Not the whole truth. But an little-known and very curious truth.”