The book is based on a series of "detective" articles and notes about iconic and undeservedly forgotten authors, characters and texts of Russian literature from Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Osip Mandelstam, Daniil Kharms and Velimir Khlebnikov to the Estonian visionary Ivan Narodny and the nameless creator of the tragic Ukrainian folk song; from the disappointed officer Pechorin, nihilist Bazarov, envious Kavalerov, the dreary clerk Epikhodov and the unlucky goose thief Panikovsky to the happy kitten named Pushkin, the playful mare of commander Budyonny and the collectivist minded chicken; from the "Brothers Karamazov" to the "Girl's toy". Most of the "half-funny" and "half-sad" novels included in the book are united by the author's natural desire to disperse, at least in his thoughts and imagination, the melancholy of our historical epoch.

Ilya Yuryevich Vinitsky is a Doctor of Philology, Professor of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University. Research interests — Russian literature of the XVIII–XIX centuries and the history of emotions. Author of the books "Ghostly Paradoxes: Modern Spiritualism and Russian Culture in the Age of Realism" (2009), "Vasily Zhukovsky's Romanticism and the Emotional History of Russia" (2015), "The Joys of Melancholy" (1997), "The Interpreter's House: Poetic Semantics and Historical Imagination of Vasily Zhukovsky" (2006), "Count of Sardinia: Dmitry Khvostov and Russian Culture" (2017) and "Transfer Pictures. Literary Translation as Interpretation and Provocation" (2022).