The latest novel by Andrei Sinyavsky “Cat's House. A long-distance novel” met readers only a year and a half after the author’s death. The meaning of the subtitle is ambiguous. While working on individual chapters, the terminally ill writer already knew that a “long journey” awaited him. The second, deeper meaning is revealed only after reading the entire work, written in the form of a literary collage. The main character of the story is a former literature teacher at a school for adults at the Moscow police department, Donat Yegorych Balzanov. Having stumbled upon an abandoned house destined for demolition, in which various miracles are happening, the hero decides to penetrate its secret, thereby hoping to discover the bearer of world evil. During the investigation, it turns out that most of the agents of evil are writers. Is great Russian literature responsible for the tragic course of Russian history? This question, which the best minds of the century have pondered, remains unanswered.