Having illegally emigrated from Soviet Russia in 1922, the author arrived in Berlin. Here he met many Russian writers who, like most Russian emigrants, lived in the area of the Zoo metro station. Zoo is a zoological garden, and therefore, deciding to introduce Russian literary and artistic emigration, who was in Berlin among the indifferent and self-occupied Germans, the author began to describe these Russians as representatives of a certain exotic fauna, completely unsuitable for normal European life. And therefore they have a place in the zoological garden. With particular confidence, the author attributed this to himself. Like most Russians who went through two wars and two revolutions, he didn’t even know how to eat in Europe - he was too inclined to the plate. The trousers were also not what they were supposed to be - without the necessary smoothed folds. And Russians have a harder gait than the average European. Starting to work on this book, the author soon discovered two important things for himself. First: it turns out he is in love with a beautiful and intelligent woman named Alya. Second: he cannot live abroad, since he spoils from this life, acquiring the habits of an ordinary European. He must return to Russia, where his friends remained and where, as he feels, he needs himself, his books, his ideas (his ideas are all connected with the theory of prose). Then this book was arranged as follows: letters from the author to Ale and letters from Ali to the author, written by himself. Ala forbids writing about love. He writes about literature, about Russian writers in exile, about the impossibility of living in Berlin, and much more. It turns out interesting.
Russian writer Alexei Mikhailovich Remizov invented the Great Monkey Order by the type of Masonic lodge. He lived in Berlin approximately as the monkey king Asyk would have lived here.
The Russian writer Andrei Bely, with whom the author more than once mistakenly changed his muffler, was not inferior to the real shaman by the effect of his speeches.
Russian artist Ivan Puni worked a lot in Berlin. In Russia, he was also very busy with work and did not immediately notice the revolution.
Russian artist Marc Chagall does not belong to the cultural world, but just as he painted best of all in his Vitebsk, he paints best of all in Europe.
The Russian writer Ilya Erenburg constantly smokes a pipe, but it is still not known whether he is a good writer.
Russian philologist Roman Jacobson is distinguished by the fact that he wears tight trousers, has red hair and can live in Europe.
Russian philologist Pyotr Bogatyryov, on the contrary, cannot live in Europe and, in order to somehow survive, must settle in a concentration camp for Russian Cossacks awaiting return to Russia. Several newspapers are published for Russians in Berlin, but not a single one for a monkey in the zoological garden, and she also misses her homeland. In the end, the author could take it upon himself.
Having written twenty-two letters (eighteen Ale and four from Ali), the author realizes that his situation is hopeless in all respects, he addresses the last, twenty-third letter to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and asks for permission to return. At the same time, it recalls that once upon the capture of Erzurum, everyone who surrendered was slaughtered. And that now seems wrong.
