The novel's hero, young entrepreneur Pyotr Alexeyevich Sobakin, discovers the recipe for a mysterious concoction hastily written down by his great-grandfather — an eccentric chemist and acquaintance of Mendeleev himself. To decode the formula, he sets off in search of the encrypted ingredients accompanied by a Moscow PR man, a dependable St. Petersburg museum employee, and a very suspicious French cousin.
They are in for merry adventures in both capitals, the provinces, and the countryside, with encounters involving vodka kings, authentically Russian Shintoists, cutting-edge artists, great connoisseurs, as well as armed and very dangerous champions of the purity of Russian spelling…