Moscow is a strange city. People are accustomed to scolding it for its bustle and carelessness. But few of those who left it do not long to see again these streets, squares, and lanes. There’s some kind of mystery in this. Whatever the city is like, so are the people living in it. The characters who inhabit the novel are peculiar—just as peculiar is the space where they live: an old district that is unusual even for the fact that it lies `between two left banks of the same river`.