Iks [X]

The protagonist of the novel 'X' is the outstanding writer Shelestov, whose prototype was Mikhail Sholokhov. Did he write his main book himself? Or he stole and reworked someone else's text, as the envious fellows in the shop suspected? Bykov puts forward his own hypothesis, which does not confirm or refute any of the existing points of view. He does not tell how it was or how it is, but looks for meanings and patterns hidden from a superficial glance in the chain of events. 'X' is the first book of Dmitry Bykov's 'I-trilogy', which also includes the novels 'June' and 'Fighter'. 'Once on Begovaya, in the car of a girl with whom I loved talking more than anything else, a story came to me. We discussed, as I remember now, the Shakespearean question, and somehow I immediately understood everything - and who wrote 'Quiet Flows the Don', and why I suddenly wake up in this or that mood in the morning, and what will happen after death, and why there was a civil war, and how to build a real th