Ia sizhu na beregu [I am Sitting on the Shore...]

This novel is a new creation of the author of 'Black on White' (Booker Prize in 2003). All the action of the novel is developed in one room of the Soviet House-boarding school for disabled, where two friends live. As helpless people they are fully isolated from the outer world and taken a bad care of. All they do is talking and playing chess. All life seems to them a chessboard on which each figure has the value. Both know that sooner or later when game ends, figures will be collected in a box. One of them is clever, he decides to stop the game and wins. Another one is the fool, therefore, he remains alive and some years later makes the greatest nonsense in his life - writes the book. The author of the book - the fool Ruben, who sincerely thinks that it is necessary to struggle until the end and that in any war it is necessary to take the weak side.