In 2017, the autobiographical book «The Game of ‘Gorodki’» by Yuri Stoyanov, People’s Artist of the Russian Federation, was published. Readers described it as «a kind book by an intelligent person.»
Yuri Stoyanov: «The book ‘The Game of ‘Gorodki” was not dictated and is not presented in the form of an interview. It has no editor; from the first to the last word, the book was written by me.» I can’t call my work a biography in the purest sense, because it’s still a genre book. It’s written in the genre of a short story, or a very short novella, heavily influenced by Mark Twain, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, and Sergei Dovlatov. Will you learn anything about me? Of course, after all, it’s written by me and about the people close to me. Will you learn something you didn’t know? Certainly. I would ask you to treat this as a genre that is both humorous and sad. It’s unclear where one ends and the other begins. I laughed like crazy, and my mom cries every time she reads this book."
In the play «Playing ‘Gorodki’,» Yuri Stoyanov’s stories are read by actors from the Art Theatre and, of course, by the author himself.
