Aleksey Shamanov’s novel “The Assistant” pushes the usual boundaries of the traditional Russian adventure novel and confidently becomes one of the brightest book events of 2008. The story begins with the fact that 33-year-old artist Andrei Tatarinov agrees to take part in work on a historical film, which An international film crew is preparing to film in the vicinity of Lake Baikal. At that moment, the hero, who has become an assistant to the production designer, still does not know that the filming will take place on the sacred island of Olkhon, where, according to legend, the grave of Genghis Khan is located, and that this grave, which scientists and adventurers have been unsuccessfully searching for for centuries, will turn out to be real the target of a strange film group. He also does not know that an accidental touch of an ancient shaman’s tambourine will trigger in him, Andrei Tatarinov, a hitherto dormant hereditary mechanism for acquiring mystical power. The powers that his ancestors, the shamans, once possessed...And filming continues, despite the fact that people are mysteriously dying one after another. Olkhon beckons with mirages and secrets, vodka flows like water and no longer intoxicates, and the doomed expedition enters the world of ancient legends and spells. A world where it is so difficult to distinguish a dream from reality, where thoughts can kill and resurrect, where a terrible black depth awaits under the snow-white ice of Lake Baikal, and where the bird-woman Muu-Shubuun vigilantly looks out for lost human souls. The novel has been nominated for the National Bestseller Award. .