This novel is a work of fiction. And at the same time it is absolutely documentary. Fiction is superimposed on a grid of real events, and through it they are revealed as a grandiose mystical canvas of Russian history of the late 20th century. Strazhnitsa is a novel about the end of the Soviet era. About how this sunset began, how it proceeded, and how it ended. It seems that this is the only novel in modern Russian literature about those events. Metaphorical realism, in which Anatoly Kurchatkin often works, is here indistinguishably mixed with mystical realism: the heroine of the novel, Albina (not a random, symbolic name!), the wife of a middle-ranking party boss, lives in two spaces - ordinary, physical, like any person, and in the sensory space of supernatural connections, turning out to be the guardian and protector of the one on whom shifts and changes in society depend. The fate of the novel's heroine is a metaphor for the end of the 73-year Soviet period of Russian history. “The Guardian” Anatoly Kurchatkin once again asserts himself as one of the most original and bright writers of modern Russia.