The book “Flight with a Hero” was prepared for the 70th anniversary of the classic of modern Russian literature Andrei Bitov, prose writer, screenwriter, public figure, winner of many literary awards, president of the Russian Pen Club. Along with the novel “Pushkin’s House,” which was called epoch-making in its time, this is the author’s most St. Petersburg book, consisting of two sections. The dotted novel “The Flying Monks” is structured like Lermontov’s “Hero of Our Time”: the short stories are connected by one hero. The book “Palace” without a king" is a special phenomenon. It is collected from “St. Petersburg texts”, forming a kind of suite, a single text unfolding throughout life. The theme of the St. Petersburg landscape rhymes here with the theme of fate, and the image of the individual with history. This work was awarded the Ivan Bunin Prize in 2006. The texts presented in the publication are published for the first time in a new author’s edition.