The evocation of this picturesque environment is not the only subject of the book. "The Watcher", written in Berlin in 1930, takes place at a time when, following the upheavals of the revolution, social boundaries are particularly uncertain and masks poorly covered in the small society of the Russian emigration. Smurov has a revenge to take on the life and desperately wants to impose an image of him, any one, to feel exist. Quite the vertigo that seizes Smurov when trying to define itself. 1984. But there is no reality to man alone, and never possess Smurov other certainty than that of being a lookout.