About the book: 2023 / Mikhail Elizarov – prose writer, musician, author of the novels “Earth” (National Bestseller Award), “Librarian” (Russian Booker Award) ), “Pasternak” and “Cartoons”, collections “Nails” (shortlist of the Andrei Bely Prize), “We went out to smoke for 17 years” (reader voting prize of the “NOS” Prize), “Burattini.” “Shells. Still, they are not stories, but rather literary “things” that deliberately show off traces of their “madeness.” Simply put, these are four different mechanisms for assembling a text: from the most traditional, claiming to be autobiographical, to the “experimental” - of course, in the author’s understanding. A hundred years ago, formalists studied the so-called device as the self-sufficient essence of the text. The reader has four different techniques, four forms. Four essences. Four shells. Cubes are gray panels where they live according to witchcraft concepts and police protocols. Cubes are not a Habitat, but Language and Thought. Cubes are cruel and tender dreams written in checkered notebooks” (Mikhail Elizarov).