Vladimir Sharov (1952–2018), as a person and as a writer, absorbed several intellectual and cultural traditions, without which it is impossible to understand Russia in the 20th and 21st centuries. This book is the first attempt to comprehend Sharov’s contribution to the artistic world of recent decades. Literary scholars, historians and philosophers reflect on the poetics, philosophy and historiosophy of his novels. Sharov wrote his texts, asking primarily the question of the origins and causes of the Russian revolution and Soviet terror. He himself revolutionized the genre of historical prose, and not only Russian. The authors of the collection are looking for a solution to the mystery of the type of historical writing created by Sharov - at once fantastic and documentary, philosophical and parody, tragic and tearfully funny. They are trying to answer the question of how Sharov’s ideas relate to the thoughts of his predecessors and teachers, from Tolstoy to Platonov.