Sergei Dovlatov (Ufa, 1941—New York, 1990) is "the writer who best knew how to read his era", said Svetlana Alexievich, 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. Perhaps she was convinced by reflections like the ones he spread in the 94 columns he wrote for the weekly The New American between 1980 and 1982 and which LaBreu Edicions now collects under the title of The Column, with translation from Russian to English by Miquel Cabal Guarro. Alexievich explained it to Cabal, who completely agrees. After all, he has translated a dozen of Dovlatov's books for LaBreu and deeply knows the legacy of the Russian author. By the way, both the translator and the publisher deserve the greatest recognition for constant work that allows us to read in our language one of the great writers of the second half of the 20th century, a humanist in the most prosaic sense: concerned with social welfare, critical of totalitarianism and disappointed with empty gestures and those disgruntled individuals incapable of making constructive proposals. "We do not consider the alternative to love to be hostility. Not even indifference. But lies. Consequently, the alternative to hatred is truth", this activist of a "spontaneous humanism" said bluntly.