A book about a wonderful writer of the mid-19th century, the ruler of the thoughts of the then intelligent youth. The story of a brief and tragic life: unhappy love, mental illness, solitary confinement. The story of a brilliant mind: how it was extinguished in the Peter and Paul Fortress. At the same time, this is a novel about Russian literature. What did the censorship and the political police do to her? It's like a chapter from a non-existent textbook. Among the characters are Nekrasov, Turgenev, Goncharov, Saltykov, Dostoevsky. It is interesting that thirty-five years ago the set of this book (the first volume) was scattered by order of the state security agencies...