District D is a collection of stories united through a common time period and location, from which gradually emerges a portrait of the author against the backdrop of “other shores,” on which his childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood passed. The book paints a self-critical portrait of the author in which one can discern the features of husbandry and cosmopolitanism, pettiness and magnanimity, and much else. Simultaneously, it paints a group portrait of a few dozen more or less registered residents of the aforementioned Cherkasy district with their more or less successful attempts at surviving the unexpected transition from post-soviet to newly independent Ukraine. According to the author, District D served as therapy for his own traumatic experiences because he wrote it while serving in the war: “I would write it out of me and would feel better; I escaped from that war and those experiences into writing.”