Plot Summary

Zakhar is 7 years old, and his brother Procopius is 9. Each of the brothers already has its own deer and its own tundra for wandering. Previously, children born into a nomad family at this age were almost forcibly taken away to study in a boarding school on the mainland. And they rarely returned to the parental home. Trying to preserve the traditions of the nomadic peoples in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the authorities decided to revive the practice of "nomadic schools" that disappeared in Russia in the 30s. That’s how the 23-year-old Nelli Andreevna falls into the Zharkov family in order to explain to Zakhar and Prokopy what a mathematician is needed in life and who Vladimir Putin is.