The book by the famous literary and theater critic Natalya Staroselskaya tells about the life and creative path of the remarkable Russian playwright Alexander Vasilyevich Sukhovo-Kobylin (1817–1903). His trilogy - "Krechinsky's Wedding", "The Affair" and "The Death of Tarelkin" - has not left the stage of Russian and foreign theaters for more than a century. A.V. Sukhovo-Kobylin was not only a playwright, but also an outstanding thinker and philosopher. His diaries, notebooks and philosophical works, in particular, the surviving fragments of the “Teaching of the World” make it possible to establish the connection between various phenomena and their reflection in the writer’s work, to trace the evolution of his views on political and economic events in Russia in the 19th century, as well as on domestic culture. only the 19th, but also the 20th centuries. The tragic twists and turns in the fate of Sukhovo-Kobylin could serve as a plot for a detective novel.