What you have in your hands is a collection of short stories, and every story is true. Sure, in the course of writing, I changed the names, removed (some of) the placenames, translated the dialogue into English and, inevitably, omitted a lot. These are short stories, you understand, you've got to omit things. I may have forgotten a lot. Almost by definition, I omitted everything that I have forgotten. But I ...Full description
What you have in your hands is a collection of short stories, and every story is true. Sure, in the course of writing, I changed the names, removed (some of) the placenames, translated the dialogue into English and, inevitably, omitted a lot. These are short stories, you understand, you've got to omit things. I may have forgotten a lot. Almost by definition, I omitted everything that I have forgotten. But I didn't invent anything. OK, maybe a little bit. No more than 5%. Just like you can't obtain 100% ethanol by distillation, you cannot have 100% truth. There must be a law of nature to that effect. Then I can say, this is a work of 5% fiction, the rest is truth.