BICH is an abbreviation that hides a “former intelligent person,” a dying breed in modern Russia. Alexey Petukhov is just such a “scourge”. He is a distant descendant of Luka Mudishchev himself, the main obscenity of the Golden Age of Russian poetry. Petukhov is not a poet, but his life is full of cheerful fornication and looks like a bright round dance in which the era itself spins, uncontrollably and hotly...