From the Other Shore

My friend Sasha,

I dedicate this book to you because I have written nothing better, and I will likely never write anything better. I love this book as a monument to a struggle in which I sacrificed much, but not the courage of knowledge. Finally, I do not fear at all putting this, at times audacious, protest into your adolescent hands. It is a protest of an independent personality against an obsolete, servile, and false worldview, against absurd idols that belong to a different time and senselessly live out their lives among us, hindering some and frightening others.

I do not want to deceive you. Know the truth as I know it. Let this truth come to you not through agonizing mistakes or deadening disappointments, but simply by right of inheritance.