What is Hamlet's secret? Did Mayakovsky commit suicide? Is The Decameron really about the joys of life? Is Anna Akhmatova related to Dante Alighieri? Is Yesenin’s death the machinations of the GPU? Why did Blok accept the revolution? Why did Sholokhov drink himself to death? What is the defect of Soviet literature? What is behind Fadeev’s suicide and why did Nikolai Ostrovsky shoot himself? And finally, is it true that homosexuals are talented? All these questions are peacefully discussed in a mansion on Bankovsky Lane over cognac by two St. Petersburg philologists Michel Litvinov and Yurik Istomin.