В основу этой книги лег сборник рассказов Татьяны Толстой "На золотом крыльце сидели" (1987), дополненный здесь несколькими рассказами последующих лет.
Tatyana Tolstaya (Татьяна Толстая) was born in Leningrad, U.S.S.R. As the great-grandniece of the Russian author Leo Tolstoy and the granddaughter of Alexei Tolstoy, Tolstaya comes from a distinguished literary family; but, according to Marta Mestrovic's interview in Publishers Weekly with the author, she hates ‘‘being discussed as a relative of someone.’’
Still, Tolstaya's background is undeniably one of culture and education. Her father was a physics professor who taught her two languages, and her maternal grandfather was a well-known translator.