Serhiy Zhadan is one of the few internationally renowned Ukrainian writers. He arrived late to the Spanish-speaking market, in 2022, thanks to the fact that Galaxia Gutenberg has opted for him with two of his works.

Starting at the end of 2013, when the Maidan revolution began, Zhadan dedicated himself body and soul to overthrowing the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. The novel is a journey to the deep east of Ukraine that uses realism and lysergic fables, to stories of gang members, gypsy villages, armed smugglers on the Russian border, gangsters and miners. It is above all a living portrait of life in a crisis because the Soviet logic that built it has disintegrated. Zhadan's best narrative appears in this fragment of a visit by the protagonist to a retired official in an old Soviet sanatorium. He was wearing rubber flip-flops, contrasted with all those exemplary medals which gave him the title “On the lapels of his lapels”.