The story focuses on the tragic love relationship between Sergei Ogloedov and Natasha Guseva, a fling from their time at Moscow State University that revives as they both join the editorial staff of Moskovskij Bogomolets.

All fifteen parts of the novel are devoted to different newspaper journalists, each of whom has a real prototype among the current and former employees of the editorial staff of Moskovskij Komsomolets — Dmitry Kholodov, Andrei Lapik, Vadim Poegli, Pyotr Spectr, Alexey Merinov, Anatoliy Baranov, Andrei Gusev, Natalya Zhuravleva, Elena Vasiluhina and others, including the Chief Editor Pavel Gusev.

The novel describes real events in which, depending on the situation, journalists appear as both saints and sinners.

[2] The novel details the manners and methods of work (including unsightly), which reigned in the newspaper Moskovskij Komsomolets.

Publishing houses in Moscow refused to print the book for nearly two years, because they feared backlash and possible sanctions from Moskovskij Komsomolets’s editor-in-chief and owner Pavel Gusev.