Isidor Chagin can memorize text of any complexity and store it in memory for as long as desired. Phenomenal abilities become an ordeal for the hero, because Chagin is deprived of the simple human joy of forgetting. Everything he touches literally becomes unforgettable for him. Every great gift is a violation of harmony. Memory needs oblivion, words need silence, and fiction needs reality. In life they are intertwined as tightly as the tragic and comic in the novels of Evgeny Vodolazkin. The novel “Chagin” is no exception. Among his characters are Heinrich Schliemann and Daniel Defoe, secret agents, archivists and entertainers, as well as a special author's style - as always, one of the main characters of the writer.