★ Author Vladislav Otroshenko is a renowned Russian writer, recipient of Italy’s Grinzane Cavour Prize, the Yasnaya Polyana Award, and other major honors. His works balance literary depth and engaging readability.
★ It brings cross-era geniuses like Nietzsche and Ovid together, using essay-novellas to uncover their life secrets. It reads like a mosaic of countless fates—diverse in theme and highly accessible.
★ Blending real materials (quotes, letters) with Natalia Tolstoy’s illustrations, it revives great figures as vivid people while adding visual appeal to the reading experience.
★ It breaks the stereotyped image of geniuses through a unique lens: it takes you to Nietzsche’s wandering in Venice’s alleys, Platonov’s encounter with his ghost in Tambov, giving classic figures warmer, more vivid dimensions.

Can you imagine vastly different figures like Arthur Schopenhauer, Thomas Wolfe, Fyodor Tyutchev, and Publius Ovidius Naso appearing in the same book? Yet they do—poets and philosophers, apostles and ancient monarchs, gods and mortals. With Vladislav Otroshenko’s deft pen, this essay-novella collection is born: each piece lifts the veil on the hidden lives and creations of past geniuses. This book is like a mosaic, merging countless eras and fates—it sometimes carries readers into the labyrinth of Venice’s streets where Nietzsche wandered (he once said, "Only this way can one feel and understand how his mind worked"), and sometimes to Tambov, where Andrei Platonov met his own ghost.

Vladislav Otroshenko is a writer, author of *Drama of a Snowy Night: An Investigative Novel About Sukhovo-Kobylin’s Fate and Criminal Case*, *Gogolian*, *Addendum to the Photo Album*, *Persona Non Grata*, etc. He is a recipient of the Yasnaya Polyana Award and Italy’s Grinzane Cavour Literary Prize.

"The protagonists of this book— the mysteries of their fates and creations— made me do things I never intended: Catullus pushed me to learn Latin, just to uncover the secret of his famous love affair with Lesbia; Khodasevich drove me to research the hydrology of the Brent River; Nietzsche forced me to wander Venice to understand how his mind was structured; Thomas Wolfe made me feel the weight of a 45-caliber pistol pointed at me by a ruthless critic... Each genius commanded me as they pleased, until I was obsessed with their lives and secrets."

Vladislav Otroshenko

This book features illustrations by Natalia Tolstoy.

#### About the Book
5 Reasons to Read Vladislav Otroshenko’s Collection
The book’s characters and eras are so diverse that every reader will find something to connect with—whether it’s Fyodor Tyutchev’s fate, Thomas Wolfe’s extraordinary talent, or the secrets of Roman classical writers.
Otroshenko’s choice of these disparate figures and themes is no accident. Several core motifs run through the pieces: Italy, myths, fate and destiny, life and death. These motifs bind the independent novellas together, forming a complete mosaic.
Through quotes, translation excerpts, letters, and diaries, we delve into the lives and minds of great people. We see not just portraits against an era’s backdrop, but living, breathing individuals.
Otroshenko has a unique writing style: the polished prose of a specialist who loves his craft, eager to share his discoveries and thoughts with readers vividly.
Natalia Tolstoy’s illustrations hold a special place in the book. Each major novella is paired with her stylized interpretations. You’ll can’t help but pause to study the illustrations before continuing to read.

#### Quotations
"Don’t dwell on its unbearably heavy overall meaning; just focus on minor details. Perhaps one of them will wink kindly at your entranced reason, offering precious clues."
"The source of imagination is too delicate, too elusive."
"Clear, powerful meaning suddenly reveals itself—where the era falls silent, where slogans lose their force, where the naked human nature (unbound by time or social structure) speaks."
"There’s still hope: unmotivated deceptions are safely protected from the intrusion of truth by their very lack of motive."
"One of the core feelings Russian consciousness inherited from the Mongols and their nomadic philosophy is the calm acceptance of vast spaces."
"At 6:30 a.m., bugle calls dragged me out of bed. Closed blinds and a pillow over my ear were no match for their sharp, rousing sound. I desperately cursed the buglers to face all kinds of disasters—spy landings in the mountains, saboteur invasions, evil threats from the Tatar Desert (Dino Buzzati, where are you!). But I waited in vain for an emergency that would require the camp to deploy all forces (including buglers) to the mountains."
"He turned it into Kania (from the abbreviation 'k. k.'—Kaiser-King)—a country where 'you (read this carefully!) are passively free, always feeling your existence lacks sufficient reason, and the grand fantasy of what never happened (or happened repeatedly) wraps around you like the ocean breeze from which humanity emerged.'"

Vladislav Otroshenko Olegovich

Vladislav Otroshenko is a Russian writer and essayist, a graduate of Moscow State University’s Faculty of Journalism, and a judge for the Yasnaya Polyana Award. His fiction and essays have been published in many prominent Russian and foreign publications—*Znamya*, *Oktyabr*, *Gnosis*, *Prometeo*, and others.

His chosen themes are remarkably diverse: among his works is *Addendum to the Photo Album* (called "the most phantasmagoric family chronicle ever written in Russian," a collection of novellas whimsically weaving myth and reality, life’s light and dark sides, the vastness of provincial Russia, and the intimacy of a single household), as well as the bestseller *Sukhovo-Kobylin: An Investigative Novel About the Fate and Criminal Case of a Russian Playwright* (a blend of historical novel and an investigation into a famous criminal case). He is also the author of novels such as *Persona Non Grata* (2002), *Gogolian and Other Stories* (2013), and *The Outskirts of Babylon* (2022).

He has won numerous awards, including Italy’s prestigious Grinzane Cavour Literary Prize (2004), first prize in the Runet literary competition Teneta (2001), the Leo Tolstoy Yasnaya Polyana Award (2003), and the Gorky Literary Prize (2006).

Foreword by the Author
Ovid’s Final Metamorphosis
Madness of the World Will
Catullus’s Feat
Encounter in Tambov
A Book for Violin Commentary
Tyutchev’s Dreams and Angels
Discrepancies Between Matthew and Luke
Two Necklaces
Krechinsky Versus Vishnu
The Italian Book of the Dead
Principle of Precise Distortion
Apology for Unmotivated Deception
To Kill a Genius Is Not Enough
The Writer and Space
Job Between God and Satan
The Brent Affair
L’ombra di Venezia (Shadow of Venice)
Life Ruined by the Telephone
Lessons of This World and the Next
The Ghost of Alexander Wolf’s Ghost
Farewell, Musil!