Sergei Dovlatov was born in an evacuation and died in exile. As a writer, he formed in Leningrad, but success came to him in America, where he lived since 1979. His artistic thought with apparent paradoxicality, grounded in life experience, is simple and noble: to tell how strangely people live - then sadly laughing, then ridiculously sad. There are no righteous people in his books, because there are no evildoers in them either. The writer knows: both heaven and hell are within us. Believed Dovlatov in one thing - a 'smile of reason.' This worthy, restrained position brought Sergei Dovlatov at the end of the second millennium widespread popularity. Alas, he died just at the moment when the glory came. At home for many years Dovlatov - one of the most consistently readable authors. His prose was staged, screened, studied in schools and universities, translated into major European and Japanese languages ??... Sergei Dovlatov said that he wanted to be like Chekhov only.