What if you were given a chance to become Harry Potter? And what if you missed that chance? Ahead of filming the first movie of the famous film franchise about a young wizard, many children were tested for the main role. But in the end only two remained, and those whose decision it depended on hesitated for a long time, not knowing whom to choose. They chose Daniel Radcliffe—this is a story we all know well. But David Fonkinos wrote not about him—he wrote about someone we don’t know: about the one who wasn’t chosen.
This is also a story about the Boy Who Lived, but this boy’s life has been built around a huge absence called “Harry Potter and My Failure”—a whole life with emptiness instead of a center, and no matter how you go in circles, you can’t avoid that emptiness. How do you overcome a defeat you aren’t responsible for? How do you get your life back—life that was stolen from you? Become invisible, become Harry Potter, become yourself?
Here is a story of magic—but it won’t be limited to spells. For the first time in Russian!