The book is unusual. As the title implies, the theme of the book is drug addiction. The author is a narcologist, has been working in various narcological clinics in New York for more than ten years. Among his patients are people of different professions, different social status, different nationalities, including our former compatriots. The genre of the work is a novel. But this is not a classic artistic novel, although in the work you can find elements of the novel too. This is not an introduction to narcology, although, of course, the reader can learn a lot of special medical information for himself. Peter Nemirovsky created his own genre, masterfully synthesizing traditional genres in one work. The author is talking frankly with the reader about what drug addiction is, how this illness is treated in the US, and why it is generally difficult to treat. The author debunks existing myths about drug addiction and talks about the little-known aspects of this terrible disease. He often asks himself and the reader direct, "frontal" questions. But, as it turns out, the answers to simple questions are very complex, ambiguous. The book "Eyes of the Sphinx" will be interesting, first of all, to those who personally faced this disaster. And professionals who work in this field. But the book is of interest to the widest reader. The author raises serious questions of medical duty, humanism, compassion for one's neighbor. And more: "The Sphinx's Eyes" is a talented, vivid image of modern New York, taken in a peculiar foreshortening. Reading a book, you see in front of you a vertical section of the City of the Big Apple - a city of non-idyllic, complex, cruel and - at the same time - benevolent, open, responsive to someone else's pain.
