The unique figure of Andrei Platonov has long been the subject of interest of many researchers and critics. His creative activity as a writer and publicist, electrical engineer and land reclamation specialist is well described and, it would seem, leaves less and less space for unexpected turns, allowing one to ask new questions about well-known material. In the book of K. Kaminsky such a turn is found. Its novelty lies in its attempt to inscribe the intellectual history associated with the Soviet electrification project and its utopian horizons into the dynamic process of poetic shaping. As a result, electricity appears not only as the subject of Platonov’s plot obsession, but also as the energy that fuels his electropoetics. K. Kaminsky – PhD, employee of the Department of Slavic Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin.