Twenty

The book by writer and critic Igor Gulin — 20 texts about Russian writers of the 20th century. These articles were written in the early 2020s for the magazine «Kommersant-Weekend». The heroes (there are also twenty of them) — classics of Soviet modernism, figures of the socialist realist canon, idols of the underground, as well as authors who remained on the periphery of researchers' attention for a long time. The plots of the texts resonate with each other, but they offer not a version of the history of literature, but a way to talk about writing as such. A person faces the catastrophes and promises of history, calls and disappointments, desires and fears. A writer — is one who, in these encounters, bets on writing.