"Text" by Dmitry Glukhovsky, summary

This book is a realistic psychological thriller published in 2017. The novel shifts the focus of human personality to the digital realm. A smartphone becomes a full-fledged repository of memories, sins, and secrets of a deceased hero. A digital trace replaces a living person’s true soul.

The work gained widespread acclaim and was successfully adapted into a film. Director Klim Shipenko made a feature-length film of the same name based on the book in 2019. The film won prestigious Russian film awards, including the Golden Eagle Award.

Returning home

Ilya Goryunov is returning to Lobnya, near Moscow, after seven years in the Solikamsk maximum-security prison colony. The court imposed the sentence on a false charge of drug trafficking. In prison, Ilya learned to survive a harsh environment. He diligently drew wall newspapers for the local administration. He avoided open conflict with criminal authorities at all costs. His mother, over the phone, urged her son to remain silent and not argue with the prison system. Ilya had high hopes for parole. One day, the prison warden demanded that Ilya write a vile denunciation of another prisoner. The young man categorically refused to betray his fellow prisoner. Because of this honest act, the prison guards denied him early release. He served his sentence from start to finish.

The anticipation of a long-awaited family reunion is overshadowed by a terrible tragedy. Ilya finds his mother dead. A neighbor confirms her sudden death from a heart attack just two days before her son’s arrival. The apartment greets him with emptiness and cold. Ilya was imprisoned because of an old incident at the Moscow nightclub "Paradise." Seven years ago, the philology student bravely defended his girlfriend, Vera, from the aggressive advances of a young drug enforcement officer. The officer’s name was Pyotr Khazin. The vengeful Khazin coldly planted cocaine in the student’s winter jacket pocket. A Moscow court handed down a harsh guilty verdict. Vera did not faithfully wait for the prisoner.

At home, Ilya calls his former friend, Sergei. Sergei comes to visit, but behaves with extreme detachment. He complains about family problems, loan debts, and a recent vacation abroad. Sergei shyly avoids eye contact with the recent convict. Ilya senses a huge gap between them. His friend quickly leaves under the trumped-up pretext of his child’s illness. The newly released young man finds himself in icy isolation. He no longer has any loved ones, no career hopes, no direction in life.

Someone else’s life on a smartphone

Despair quickly merges with severe alcohol intoxication. Ilya silently takes his late mother’s kitchen knife. He sets off for Moscow, to the Trekhgornaya Manufactory. Ilya longs to find Khazin and face his enemy squarely. A chance encounter occurs in a dark alleyway among empty brick buildings. The ex-con suddenly stabs the major in the defenseless neck. The knife wound proves instantly fatal. Ilya hastily hides the dead policeman’s body in a deep manhole. He takes the dead man’s service Makarov pistol and smartphone.

The phone becomes a mystical portal into an alien reality. Ilya carefully deciphers the password from Khazin’s bloody fingerprints. He begins obsessively studying the device’s extensive contents. The gadget securely stores personal correspondence, intimate photos, video recordings, and work audio files. Ilya voraciously reads messages from Khazin’s parents, his girlfriend Nina, and corrupt colleagues. The fugitive decides to buy himself a little time through cunning. Ilya boldly replies to callers as Pyotr, skillfully mimicking the dead man’s distinctive communication style. He employs the cynical major’s favorite emojis and his rude, abrupt phrases.

The digital archive relentlessly exposes the new master’s dark secrets. Pyotr Khazin constantly played a dangerous double game. He sold confiscated drugs with impunity and used cocaine himself. Previously, Pyotr had a long-standing relationship with Ksenia, the daughter of an influential deputy minister. General Khazin was counting heavily on this career-boosting marriage. Pyotr quickly hooked Ksenia on pure cocaine. She soon ended up in a closed clinic for compulsory treatment. Pyotr cowardly abandoned her for Nina. The general was absolutely furious at this rash act. He tried to forcefully separate his son from his new flame. Pyotr took vile revenge on his own father. He secretly recorded a compromising conversation in the departmental sauna. The major passed this scandalous recording on to his handlers in the secret services. His father was shamefully dismissed, while Pyotr calmly retained his comfortable position.

Pyotr’s relationship with Nina is also steeped in lies. Nina sincerely loved the major, but she grew tired of his constant infidelity and unmotivated cruelty. She finds herself pregnant by Khazin. Nina secretly checks herself into the departmental hospital. She mentally prepares for a surgical abortion. Nina writes to Pyotr in the timid hope of receiving verbal support, but the dead subscriber remains logically silent. Ilya carefully reads her desperate text messages. He feels a keen sense of human pity for this unknown girl. Ilya writes Nina warm, encouraging words. He categorically dissuades her from terminating the pregnancy. He makes her the long-awaited marriage proposal in an email, on behalf of a repentant Pyotr. Nina joyfully escapes the hospital. She is determined to keep their child.

Deadly Deal

At the same time, Ilya is organizing a highly dangerous financial transaction. He finds a work contact in correspondence for a wholesale drug buyer named Magomed. Ilya plans to retrieve the drug from a stash and sell it profitably to people from the Caucasus. Ilya desperately needs the money to organize a proper funeral for his mother. He desperately wants to use the remaining funds to purchase a reliable fake passport. An attempt to borrow fifty thousand rubles from Sergey for the documents ends in failure. Sergey’s wife categorically forbids her husband from lending money to a criminal. Ilya realizes his utter loneliness in his hometown. A travel agency agrees to issue fake documents for fifty thousand rubles in cash. Ilya passionately dreams of flying to distant Colombia. There, he plans to start a new life.

Ilya decides to sell a small portion of the drugs he found. He arranges a brief meeting with Pyotr’s old friend Gosha. Gosha readily buys six grams of cocaine at a good discount. Ilya is genuinely delighted with the easy money. That evening, he learns terrible criminal news. Gosha suddenly dies of an acute overdose in a karaoke bar. Ilya is horrified to realize his direct responsibility for the death of a living person. He understands crystal clear that someone else’s phone is sowing only grief and bloody destruction around it. Every message sent sets off a new chain of irreversible tragedies.

Exhausted by insomnia, Ilya falls asleep in a subway car. He has a vivid, realistic dream. He’s on a plane with Nina. She tenderly presses his hand to her stomach. She calls him Petya. Ilya sees a strange, well-groomed face in the reflection of the window. They’re flying to South America. Awakening is rude. A police patrol brutally awakens Ilya in an empty car at the final stop. The fugitive narrowly avoids an identity check and arrest.

Ilya takes confidential information about a major stash from his timid colleague, Igor. He drives to the posh President Hotel for a business meeting with buyers. Magomed’s bearded men busily hand him a hefty package. Two hundred and fifty thousand euros are tightly packed inside. An unimaginably huge sum of cash. Ilya can easily pay for his mother’s coffin, take her passport, and disappear forever. The document, in the name of Ilya Gorenov, has already been successfully processed at the passport office. Southern freedom seems very close to Ilya.

Redemption and Assault

The fugitive quickly realizes the grave consequences of his digital deception. If Khazin fails to deliver the promised drugs to the buyers, the Caucasians will inevitably seek revenge. They know Nina’s home address very well. The bandits will brutally murder her for Pyotr’s gambling debts. Ilya cannot cold-bloodedly sacrifice Nina for his own physical salvation. He stubbornly returns to the hotel’s marble lobby. Ilya boldly hands the package of euros back to Magomed’s armed assistant. He frankly declares that the deal is forever off due to Khazin’s physical death.

Ilya sends his final farewell messages. He writes at length to General Khazin on behalf of his murdered son. Ilya posthumously reconciles the dead Pyotr with his stern father. He tells the broken old man about his future grandson and sternly asks him to take care of Nina. Ilya finally destroys Khazin’s phone in a cold sewer manhole. The major’s digital life ends forever. Ilya goes to the hospital morgue to visit his late mother. He quietly bids her farewell in the cold basement. He has no money for a lavish funeral service. His mother will be laid to rest in a modest, unmarked municipal grave.

A lonely man returns to his old apartment in Lobnya. He warms up some cabbage soup from last night and mechanically turns on the television. The local news is breaking news about the body of a police officer found on the grounds of the Trekhgornaya Manufactory. The investigation ring around the apartment is rapidly tightening. Patrol cars are thickly parked near the shabby entrance. Special forces soldiers are tightly blocking the entrance. Ilya slowly takes out his captured Makarov pistol. He loudly fires through the open kitchen window. Security forces launch a massive armed assault on the apartment. Ilya desperately tries to shoot himself, but his old service weapon misfires. The special forces kill Ilya Goryunov during the assault.

Ilya dies in the cold November of 2016. Mother and son are buried side by side at a modest state expense. Nina safely gives birth to a healthy daughter. The world moves on indifferently. Time leaves behind long-lasting, cherished memories for some, while others are quickly consigned to absolute, deafening oblivion.