The most controversial writer of our time, the author of the novels “Russian Beauty” and “The Last Judgment,” took a man as the subject of his new book. The man, says Viktor Erofeev, meets the 21st century with a white flag of surrender in his hands. This reminds the author of waving his long johns. He writes about Russian men as “a cloud in his pants,” but not in the gentle sense that Mayakovsky had in mind, but as a phantom: “We speak the language of emptiness. The Russian man no longer exists. There was a Russian man, there is no Russian man, there may be a Russian man. This is the dialectic.” In 37 mosaic texts, which are brought together by theme and style on the fine line of prose and essayism, Viktor Erofeev examines a man in different conceivable and inconceivable positions. He writes about the cultural facades and rough undersides of female-male relationships. Formulating a unique code of men, Victor Erofeev, as always, talking about each other and others, talks about himself with daring frankness and self-irony. The book was published with the assistance of: Zbigniew Shabutski.