The novel covers the period from 1958, when the poems of Ruslan Kireev first appeared in print, to 2007, in which this book was completed. It depicts the events of the author’s personal and creative life against a broad socio-political background, most of which are reflected in his works of art. Now the masks have been removed from their heroes, and they (or rather, their prototypes) are presented to the readers as they were in real life, under their own names. Each year is dedicated to a separate chapter, which ends with a “close-up”. These are a kind of portraits of writers with whom fate brought Kireev together for half a century. Kataev and Rubtsov, Svetlov and Lakshin, Solzhenitsyn and Yevtushenko, Astafiev and Rozov, Makanin and Mikhalkov, Kim and Zalygin... But the main character of the “novel without masks” is the author himself, who wrote a confession unprecedented in its frankness and mercilessness towards himself.