Vasyl Masyutin (1884 - 1955) - sculptor, painter, graphic artist, medalist, writer, art historian. In 1921 he emigrated to Germany. It is interesting that both Ukrainians and Russians consider it "theirs". And as an artist, he really served both. But he wrote both of his fantasy stories, which were included in this edition, in Ukrainian. "Two of One" was written before the First World War (ahead of M. Bulgakov's novel on a similar topic - "Dog's Heart"), but was published in Lviv only in 1936, "Princess Nefreta" - written in 1919, and was published in Lviv 1938.
Stories upset the press at the time, clerical magazines saw in them debauchery and sharply attacked the author and the publisher, calling them "cobblestones", ie boulevard.
Young and talented German Egyptologist Robert Wright dreams only of science and has high hopes. To cool the young man down a bit, his teacher jokingly shows a papyrus with romantic poems by a certain Nefreta. Wright is so fascinated by the personality of the ancient poetess, the Egyptian princess, that she falls in love with the mummy and tries to revive it.
An unexpected opportunity gives him the opportunity to conduct the last important experiment: a man dies in front of the doctor's house, who was cut in half by a hot wire. In these two halves of the human body Oshchurkov introduces a means of regeneration ...
Interestingly, the novel "Princess Nefreta" was repeatedly published in Russia, where "Russian artist and writer" was translated ... from Ukrainian.