A collection of essays by prose writer, translator and critic Alexei Polyarinov is like an intimate conversation with a good friend about cinema and literature. The author shares the most intimate ideas of unwritten books: he talks about a novel about the adventures of Cervantes’s mother, about fan fiction based on The Wizard of Oz, and even gives an imaginary tour of a morgue near Moscow, simultaneously giving a lecture about the dead in Russian literature. In the second part of the book, readers will find a story "frenemy" by Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace, an essay on one of the most terrible American historical novels - "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy, reflections on the emergence of the global novel and other texts on cinema and literature, written with incredible love for the subject and excellent feeling humor.