Mikhail Sholokhov wrote his main work, the epic novel “Quiet Don,” at the age of twenty-seven. For a long time, many could not - and did not want - to believe that such a young man was capable of writing one of the central works in Russian literature. For decades, the question of the authorship of “Quiet Don” remained one of the most discussed in Russian literary criticism. The new film adaptation of the epic novel, which was skillfully directed by S. Ursulyak, served as the beginning of a new round of gossip and speculation around “Quiet Don”. Not a single page of the manuscripts of the first and second volumes of the novel was preserved in the archives - and this played into the hands of M. Sholokhov’s ill-wishers. The famous Moscow journalist L. Kolodny for many years collected testimonies from Sholokhov’s friends and acquaintances, eyewitnesses to the creation of the epic, and found the manuscripts of the first and second volumes of the novel, drafts, versions written by M. Sholokhov. The proposed book is a fascinating literary investigation that will once and for all dispel all doubts about the authorship of “The Quiet Don.”