Serguei Dovlatov - O Ofício

The Craft (1985) — the arduous craft of writing, for which Dovlatov fought tooth and nail with an Underwood — is not one book, but two: "The Invisible Book" and "The Invisible Journal."

The first chronicles the adventures and misadventures of a Soviet writer — a certain Dovlatov — who does everything, unsuccessfully, to be published in his country. From the concessions the author refuses to make to the humiliations he endures, from the foolish agents of the system to the stubborn editors he encounters, it is a hilarious reflection on bureaucracy, censorship, and the condition of writers in realms of stupidity. The second narrates Dovlatov's new life in the United States, where, as soon as he arrived, "as befits a Russian writer," he lazed on the sofa for six months, and the no less difficult attempt to found a newspaper for immigrants like himself in New York, the center of freedom and the navel of capitalism.