Number Two. A Novel about a Man Who Did Not Become Harry Potter

What if you had the chance to become Harry Potter? And what if you missed that chance? In the run-up to the filming of the first movie of the famous film franchise about the young wizard, many children auditioned for... the lead role, but in the end, only two remained, and those who had the power to decide hesitated for a long time, unsure of whom to choose. They chose Daniel Radcliffe — this story we know well. But David Foenkinos did not write about him — he wrote about someone we do not know: about the one who was not chosen. This is also a story about The Boy Who Lived, but this boy's life is built around a gigantic silence called 'Harry Potter and My Failure' — an entire life with emptiness instead of a center, and no matter how many times you go around in circles, you cannot avoid the emptiness. How to overcome a defeat for which you are not to blame? How to reclaim the life that was stolen from you? To become invisible, to become Harry Potter, to become yourself? Before you is a story about magic — but spells will not be the only thing at play here. For the first time in Russian!