The novel by philologist Roman Shmarakov is an example of a subtle literary game in which the reader is offered several roles at once; in addition to the traditional one, in which you need to follow the development of the plot and the beauty of style and language, these are the roles of an insightful detective (after all, every murder must be solved), a connoisseur of subtle English humor (and who doesn’t love Jeeves and Wooster?), a lover of stories from “The Decameron” Boccaccio and the “Suffering Middle Ages”, symbolism of baroque painting and allegories. In the interweaving of plot lines and the “weaving of words” one can discern more than just a novel - a postmodern, multi-layered novel, where everyone can add their own and where there is a place for many things: the “heroic deeds” of ancestors, clashes between myth-makers and myth-busters, spiritualistic séances and altercations caused by that world of spirits.