“Killing Bobrykin” (the Russian Booker Prize) is a novel of tenderness and a novel of tragedy, a psychological detective story and a love story. The hero, Sasha Shishin, is “not from this world”—from the world of childhood. And his love, the girl Tanya, and his hatred—the rival Bobrykin—also come from childhood. Shishin’s mother stands in the way of Bobrykin’s defeat, for whom an adult son remains an eternal fool. One way out: kill Bobrykin… So was there really murder in this “most complicated” (as Galina Volchek put it) novel? And who killed whom? “There was a murder. A murder of an entire world—the Emerald City of big hopes. The story of the murder of one love” (Sasha Nikolaenko). “Perhaps this is the best Russian book at the beginning of the 21st century. Not a single extra word, not a single false note” (Sergey Belyakov). Prose writer and artist Sasha Nikolaenko is the author of the novels “Fedya Bulkin, the Sky Postman,” “The Ant God: a Requiem,” and the collection “People Lived as Always.”