At the beginning of the 2000s, he published poems in Ural literary magazines and almanacs, then made his debut in prose with the novel Nizhny Tagil. Salnikov's all-Russian fame was brought to him by a phantasmagoric novel about a family who fell ill on New Year's Eve - "The Petrovs in the Flu and Around It." For it, the writer received the National Bestseller Award and the Critical Academy Prize of the NOS Award. Three years later, a play based on “The Petrovs” was staged at the Gogol Center, and a film by Kirill Serebrennikov, included in the program of the Cannes Film Festival, will appear on the screens. Especially for the literary issue of Esquire, Salnikov wrote a story about a boiler room, in which he reveals the peculiarities of a worker’s everyday life.