This author won’t leave anyone indifferent. They love him, admire him, and curse him. The old master created a new novel whose hero wants to live in defiance of terrible trials of life. This novella is dictated by the author’s desire to tell his own truth about war, about his frontline experience, and about everything that fell to the lot of an 18-year-old soldier thrown by fate, the country, and command into a cruel maelstrom where bloodily carried out “cursed work of war” was happening. At the end of the narrative, the author traces the life of his hero all the way up to our days, painfully reflecting on why the fates of many good, honest people serving the Fatherland turned out so tragically—and how one must live so that the human race does not degenerate. And even on the eve of death, just like once at the front, words were torn loose: “How much I want to live!”