Nikolai Kononov has gained a reputation as a writer following the “Proustian tradition.” And in fact: slipping time, unspoken words, the instability that permeates present existence, are the main, although hidden, themes of his psychological prose. Action in the works included in The book “Magical Bestiary” takes place, as a rule, at the junction of the past and the present. However, his heroes are rather not “in search of lost time”, but in search of “lost themselves.” Realizing the perniciousness of their feelings, they willingly surrender to their will, because they understand that “eros and thanatos are inseparable.” The herds of kouros, ephebes, gods and golems are a fauna outlandish even for a bestiary. Conventional and a little schoolboy Antiquity is drowning in a fat, cliché timelessness that leaves no room for the Middle Ages. Using all means of style, Kononov pumps the “sticky air” of provincial life into the reservoirs of his prose. From the Brownian swarming of this muddy kitchen life-slurry, a ray of light snatches out (see “A Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom”) individual attractive bodies, especially male and youthful ones. Their Carrara beauty, or rather, spiritual charm, not without a wormhole (“Marble Cockroach”) is beyond the reach of greasy jokes and lustful touches and therefore seems and turns out to be ghostly, doomed...