Vasily Aksyonov. Say raisin.

One of Vasily Aksyonov's most famous novels is a playful, brilliantly written chronicle of the fictional photo album "Say Raisin." Several renowned Soviet photographers conceived the unthinkable in Soviet reality: collecting their work in a single album and publishing it in defiance of censorship. The vigilant guardians of party ideology and the "organs" (in the novel, the "glands") begin to persecute these "ideological saboteurs." The captivatingly fictional story of the uncensored photo album "Say Raisin" hints at the very real history of the famous literary almanac "Metropol," whose authors challenged one of the regime's cornerstones—censorship—and paid the price. Behind the masters of the lens, the book's heroes, are Metropol residents, renowned writers and poets, including the novel's author himself.