In “The Marble Swan” three lines are intricately intertwined. The first is post-war childhood, painful relationships in the family, youth associated with the cartoonishly gloomy Tartu philological department, where Yu. M. Lotman rules, a story about friendship with Dovlatov and others... The second line is surreal short stories born from real events. And the third is a special look at those great works of literature that most influenced the author. All together - a portrait of the era and at the same time - a portrait of a writer whose life is inevitably built according to the laws of his creativity. The novel is a Russian Booker finalist, winner of the Zvezda magazine award and the Estonian Cultural Capital Foundation award for 2014.