The book by Gasan Huseynov, Doctor of Science, a specialist in ancient and modern culture, is built like a dictionary: each word (often, in principle, untranslatable) is devoted to a separate and very capacious essay.
Some words are useless to look up in a dictionary. And to explain them, sometimes you need to tell a whole story. And even then it is not known — will it help? For example, the author of this book once did not succeed, despite all his academic regalia and the highest qualifications (Gasan Huseynov — Doctor of Science, Professor, specialist in ancient and modern culture). His friend, a German doctor, could not figure out why his patient, a Jewish emigrant from Donetsk, calls the ham (Schinken) the Talmud, and the headache — hemorrhoids. It sounds strange, but the answer is simple: «Talmud» in the meaning of «a very thick book» is translated into German as «ham», and the Russian «hemorrhoids» in the meaning of «difficulty» is not translated into any of the languages at all. Behind each of these words and phrases is a whole system of connections, events, layers of the cultural unconscious. Language turns modernity into a cipher, the key to which is lost over time — if you do not fix this elusive, do not remove it from the language. This is exactly what Huseynov is doing. His book is built like a dictionary, where each word (roof, gueshniki, oncoming traffic, traffic jams …) is devoted to a separate essay — capacious, sharp, topical. And it turns out such a cut of the zero — seen through a magnifying glass of the tongue.
Case, 240 p.