Biographies of recently deceased classics are usually written by their apologists, generous with their anointing and extremely restrained where clearing away the rubble of myths and clichés is required.

However, Yuri Vitalyevich Mamleev was lucky in this regard: he himself, like his associates, was not satisfied with the superficial level of reality and always sought to look beyond it - and Eduard Lukoyanov, the author of the first critical biography of Mamleev, acted in the same way.

The protagonist of 'Father of the Shafts' appears before us not as a monument to himself, but as a living person with all his shortcomings, obsessions and creative breakthroughs, and his strange retinue - as a community of eerie creatures who, whether we like it or not, largely determined the features and character of modern Russian culture.