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[Alexandr Korol]

Question: In the first book, you write that first you need to accept yourself as you are, and only then ask the question: “Am I worthy of being someone?” And when something is given, you believe it’s not yours, and there are many things you’re simply not allowed, things readers can’t even imagine. What is the main character’s attitude in the first volume toward all his “not allowed”?

You know, the first book, the very first book. I mean, of course I kept a diary, and later I turned it into the book “Answer.” But at the same time, I was also writing a book — deliberately, an actual book. I titled it “Character” — that was the very first book that was published. It wasn’t based on my diary entries but was structured more like a playful, interactive book. It began with something like, “So, you’re a person who’s stumbled upon this book, you’re reading it — why do you have this time now, and for what reason did you even get this book? Who recommended it to you? Do you realize that right now I’m controlling you, your attention? That whatever I write next, I already know what your thought, your reaction, your mood will be. And you don’t even know who I am — a girl, a boy, a man, a woman.” And in that book I tried to convey to the reader that a person can be anyone, that if you are aware and you are consciousness, and you look at the world soberly, clearly, then you can choose any life: you can be an actor, a football player, a doctor, a sniper — anyone at all. And I felt that way since childhood. But I saw that people didn’t think like that, that all people — at the time I was still in school, finishing school... No, actually, when I had already written that book, I think I had already graduated school, I was about 18 or 19. And at that time I saw that all the readers — or rather, all the people, since there were no readers yet — everyone was already settled into a role because of their own complexes, greed, desires, instincts, sins, vices — all these qualities, and every person had a huge set of them. And because of these qualities, they already saw the world in a distorted way — they saw people, me, everything. Some were driven only by greed, some only by their complexes. And from that, their further choices in life were already shaped — who they would become. And I felt like I couldn’t settle on anything because I could be anyone, absolutely anyone. And that any person who had become someone, or even someone who hadn’t yet become anything — I could easily guide them on how to become that, anyone at all. But I felt like I was zero. Everyone else wanted to define me, and of course,