The Sucker

Alexei Varlamov’s heroes are our contemporaries, unraveling the mysteries of existence alongside us and, above all, trying to understand life, which not merely harshly but cruelly tests a person, tormenting the heart with painfully insoluble questions and condemning one to loneliness.
“The Sucker” is a novel about a country that has shifted from a dead stop, that has undergone a major internal upheaval,
and its main character is a man who turned out to be unprepared for this upheaval; because of his inner qualities he cannot enter this world, he rejects it, and this leads him to thoughts of the approaching end of earthly history, the end of the world.
The author’s position here is that a person, of course, should remember the end of the world, but it is wrong to reason in such a way, to take upon oneself the responsibility of assuming that we are living in the “last times” and that such-and-such signs point directly to it.
Even if that is so, the motto should be: “Prepare to die, but sow the rye.” Fulfill your duty, your calling, right up to the very last day; do not relax, do not withdraw from reality, otherwise you will suffer defeat.
The idea of “The Sucker” is to show a certain negative example through the fate of a very likable person, very close to the author, who nonetheless has been infected by the virus of apocalyptic fear.