I am glad to have met Serguei Dovlatov. Russian writers are more accustomed to names such as Gogol, Puxkin, Chejov or Tolstoi, but I can assure you that, once tested, Dovlatov (Ufa, 1941–New York, 1990) is one of those writers that do not forget.

A marginal writer who completely destroyed literary circles and fame. In his role as a journalist (trovator of the regime, according to the writer), he has written most of his works based on anecdotes of his life as Leningrad or Tallinnen. Among them, the Suitcase (1986) to which we refer in this article. When he was banned from publishing, he was expelled from the Writers' Association in 1978 and emigrated to the United States. The suitcase has departed from this passage.

Although I don't like to go into gender issues, it can be said that it's somewhere between a novel and a book of stories, without structure of principle, development and final. Eight personal objects inside the suitcase inspire each chapter: Finnish socks, a pair of boots, suit, belt, jacket, poplin shirt, cap and driver gloves.

Through this accumulation of memories associated with each object is constructed the portrait of a Soviet Union between 60 and 70 years old, in which we see Dovlatov, accompanied by a bottle of vodka, incapable of getting used to Orthodox communist life through the streets of Leningrad. Each object is the embodiment of a story, linked to an era of the writer's life: when he worked in the traffic of stockings, when he stole the boots of the mayor of St. Petersburg, the redactions of the newspaper he worked, when he bought a suit to go for dinner with a spy or when he did the role of actor of Zar Peter I.

They are satire about the Soviet regime. An agile, direct writing that mixes irony and absurd humor. In the story Jaka by Fernand Léger we can see the final confrontation he has with his brother:

“And my brother asks me:

“How do you feel in America?” Is it true that they sell vodka there twenty-four hours a day?

“I don’t think. The inns are open, yes.

What about beer?

– You can buy everything you want in the shops that open in the evening.

A courteous break.

– Long live the capitalists! How fast!”

At eight o'clock I liked Popelín's shirt more, fortunately, a principle never fails: “When I was a kid, I had a nanny. Luiza Genrikhovna. I was a little bit careless, because I was afraid they would stop him. He once put me on shorts. And from the same hole in my pant, he brought me in the two legs. And so I was all day long. […] I knew it was a tracheath suit. But I shut up. I didn't want to start changing again. Like now.”

A highly recommended book. One of those that makes you smile from the beginning to the end.