Advice of a Lonely Smoker

Maxim Kantor offers an unexpected genre—an ironic philosophical detective story. The author of the fundamental “Drawing Manual,” political essays “Slow Jaws of Democracy,” and a tragic novel “To That Side” proves that serious thoughts about Russia’s fate can be expressed in the form of a criminal narrative—with the genre’s typical hero characters: a wise detective and his friend—a chronicler of events. We have never met such a strange sleuth before: Professor of history Sergey Ilyich Tatarnikov, who solves any case based on knowledge of the overall picture of the world—and, along the way, tells philosophical parables. The case of the missing real-estate agents, the disappeared state security colonel, the mysterious kingdom of Udmurtia, and a theft on the Moscow–St. Petersburg express—for the detective-historian, these are an opportunity to ponder the nature of our society. As always with Maxim Kantor, the book provides a panorama of today’s Russia, from a homeless man to the president.