The subtitle of the first edition of “Notes of a Simple-Minded Man” is “… about our lives, torments, adventures—about how we fell, got up, and fell again—about our merciless struggle and quiet joys…”. These stories by Arkady Timofeyevich Averchenko are written about tragic events: the First World War, the October Revolution, and the civil war that followed. Painfully experiencing the need to leave Russia and the further life and wandering in emigration, Averchenko writes a series of works soaked in pain and sadness—though, at the same time, veiled with humor, so that only later, after reading, does each hopelessness of the situation the Russian émigrés found themselves in come into full awareness behind the smiles and sharp satire…