For the first time in Russian - the long-awaited new novel by Booker laureate Yann Martel. the author of the famous “Life of Pi” - a book that made a real explosion in the world cultural environment and became not only an international bestseller, but also the flag of literature of the new century. The main character of “Beatrice and Virgil” is the writer Henry, the author of a mega-popular novel all over the world. moves to an unnamed metropolis, where, struggling with a creative crisis, he joins an amateur theater troupe and works as a waiter in a chocolate shop. Suddenly he receives two parcels in the mail - Flaubert's short story “The Legend of Saint Julian the Stranger” and the manuscript of the unfinished play “Beatrice and Virgil”. The sender turns out to be an elderly taxidermy, the owner of the Okapi Taxidermy shop, who needs Henry’s help to finish writing the play. But gradually Henry begins to be tormented by the suspicion that the elderly taxidermist is hiding a terrible, if not bloody, secret...