For the first time in Russian - the latest novel by a modern English classic, “the most graceful stylist and the most unpredictable master of all imaginable literary forms” (The Scotsman). “Elizabeth Finch is much more than just a novel,” writes the Catholic Herald. “It’s also a philosophical treatise on everything.” So, meet Elizabeth Finch. Take her course on Culture and Civilization. It will change your view of the world. For her evening students, she serves as a source of inspiration, a troublemaker, a “lightning bolt of advice.” And now, decades later, Neil (former actor, failed restaurateur, "King of Abandoned Projects") is sorting through her notebooks, trying to find the key to the elusive image of a man of mystery named Elizabeth Finch - a charismatic, eccentric thinker, an apologist for methodology, who knows exactly at what moment “history went the wrong way”: when Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor of Ancient Rome, was defeated... “Barnes’ new novel is a mystery novel: an intellectual, philosophical detective story. And also - or rather, first of all - it is an exploration of love in all its forms, not just romantic" (The Sydney Morning Herald).