If Pushkin is the first love of reading Russia, then Yesenin is its last love. It would seem an enviable fate. But it is not for nothing that Yesenin himself, comparing himself with Pushkin, admitted: “Happiness turned out to be difficult”... In the abundance of biographical versions and contradictory judgments, the reader is lost - where to look for the real truth? How can one discern the living face of a poet? Alla Marchenko, author of the books “Lermontov” and “Akhmatova: A Life”, laureate of the “Big Book” prize, builds her convincing reconstruction of his tragic path.