Night Shift

The collection of essays by prose writer, translator, and critic Alexei Polyarinov feels like a soulful conversation with a good friend about cinema and literature. The author shares his most intimate thoughts—ideas for unwritten books: he talks about a novel depicting the adventures of Cervantes' mother, about fan fiction based on «The Wizard of Oz», and even conducts an imaginary tour of a morgue in the Moscow region, while giving a lecture on the dead in Russian literature.

In the second part of the book, readers will find the story of the «fateful friendship» of Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace, an essay on one of the most terrifying American historical novels - «Blood Meridian» by Cormac McCarthy, reflections on the emergence of the global novel, and other texts about cinema and literature, written with incredible love for the subject and excellent sense of humor.