The Left-Luggage Office: A Bourgeois Book

Alexander Kabakov (1943–2020) is a prose writer, journalist, and playwright; the author of the family novel “Everything Can Be Fixed,” the acclaimed anti-utopia “The Man Who Wouldn’t Return,” the elegant “The Runaway,” and other works. “Left Luggage” is a remembrance of the things from my life. The second half of the twentieth century and a respectable part of the twenty-first have been preserved in these objects. I think they can tell about time no less than people can.
…I firmly believe that the clothing of heroes and small accessories are no less important than their portraits, everyday habits, and even social status. “The broad bolivar” and “the never-sleeping breget” of Onegin, “a tailcoat in Nawarino smoke with flames,” and the neatly twirled necktie of Chichikov, Oblomov’s dressing gown, the “Jordan trousers” of Aksyonov and the Lend-Lease leather jacket of Trifonov—this whole flea-market of things, the list of brands and trends, is the literal body of the named heroes… Alexander Kabakov. Illustrations by Sasha Nikolaenko.