Evgeniy Vodolazkin (b. 1964) is a philologist, author of works on ancient Russian literature and... prose writer, finalist of the BIG BOOK and the Andrei Bely Prize for the novel Soloviev and Larionov. Lives in St. Petersburg. The reaction of philologists to a colleague who has taken up literary creativity is often akin to the reaction of doctors to a sick colleague: he just stood at the operating table and - please - is already lying down. And yet, “being an ichthyologist and a fish at the same time” is not only acceptable, but also useful, as the book “Tool of Language” proves. Short witty sketches from the lives of scientists, memories of people close to the author, essays and sketches - something from Pushkin’s “table-talk” and Yuri Olesha’s notes - remind: the border between a person and a text is not as strong as it may sometimes seem.< /p>