Father of the Shakers. The Life of Yuri Mamleev to the Grave and Beyond

Biographies of recently departed classic authors are usually written by their apologists, who are generous with praise and very restrained where there is a need to clear away the debris of myths and clichés. However, Yuri Vitalyevich Mamleev was lucky in this regard: he, like his associates, was not content with a superficial level of reality and always sought to look beyond it — as did Eduard Lukoyanov, the author of the first critical biography of Mamleev. The main character of "Father of the Shakers" appears before us not as a monument to himself, but as a living person with all his flaws, obsessive ideas, and creative breakthroughs, and his strange entourage as a community of eerie beings who, whether we like it or not, largely defined the features and character of modern Russian culture.