The fellow made a phone call first, and then said to Han Zhou: "He just happened to be free, I'll take you there, it's at his house." ”

Han Zhou said: "The things are in the hotel, you have to go and get them first." ”

The fellow said: "Okay, I'll be with you." ”

The two first went to the hotel where Han Zhou was staying, and then took a taxi to a single-family apartment building.

Third floor.

The fellow knocked on the door three times.

"It's coming!"

With an authentic northeast accent and the sound of footsteps, the door was opened.

Out of a handsome black-haired guy with slightly blue eyes, a high nose bridge, fair skin like a Slavic, and three-dimensional facial features.

The guy said: "Lao Chen, good afternoon!." ”

The countryman's surname is Chen.

The young man looked at Han Zhou again, and said with excitement on his face: "This is Mr. Han Zhou! I am a fan of your Douyin!"

The guy patted his chest: "My name is Ivan, just call me Big Ivan." I grew up in China and came to live in Russia in high school because my mother is Russian. I now specialize in Russian antique appraisal, the scope of business includes World War I and World War II firearms, celebrity paintings, manuscripts, musical instruments, etc., with five years of experience, good reputation, you can ask casually outside, I Ivan, have a good reputation. Mr. Han is a domestic bigwig and a friend of Lao Chen, if you have any antique cultural relics, just take them out, I will help you identify them for free. ”

The tone is sincere.

Han Zhou said: "Okay." ”

He pulled out a stack of yellowed paper with tight lines of letters written in black ink.

The young man, Ivan, invited the two into the room. Put on white gloves, put on glasses, and take the manuscript.

Carefully flipped through them one by one, frowning slightly.

Flip through and analyze.

"This manuscript, looking at the color of the paper, must have been around for a long time, and it is not easy to preserve it so completely. ”

"It's Russian, that's right, Cyrillic. Look at the content, not a diary, poetry, it should be a novel. ”

"It's a rough word, but there's a fiery and direct aesthetic. From the perspective of grammatical habits, it can also be seen that the manuscript was written relatively early, at least more than 100 years ago. ”

Ivan continued to flip.

Flip to the middle and see a blank space on the right side of the paper, a line of small print.

Frown and read it.

"Hold the grass!"

Suddenly exclaimed, and a national curse came out of his mouth.

Han Zhou said, "What's wrong?"

Ivan pointed to the line of small words and said, "Mr. Han, look at this sentence." ”

Han Zhou's gaze fell on this line of small characters.

Han Zhou shook his head: "I don't understand." ”

Ivan: "The meaning of this line of Russian is very simple, it is a signed phrase by the author, telling others that he wrote this manuscript. ”

The tone is mysterious.

Han Zhou said: "Who is it?"

Ivan no longer sold the guanzi and said: "Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky." ”

The first ten words, Han Zhou listened to it without feeling, and when he heard the last seven words, "Dostoevsky", he understood. (The full names of Russians are really long, for example, the author of "How Steel is Made", Nikolai Alekseevich Ostrovsky, is also so long, it is difficult to remember)

Han Zhou nodded and said, "It turned out to be Dostoevsky, the world-famous writer." ”

Fyodor Dostoevsky, born in 1821, died in 1881. He wrote such immortal works as "The Brothers Karamazov", "The Demons", "Crime and Punishment", "The Insulted and the Damaged", and in the history of world literature, he is famous enough to be on a par with Tolstoy, representing the pinnacle of Russian literature.

In 1845, Dostoevsky wrote his debut novel, The Poor, in the epistolary style. In January 1846, "The Poor" was serialized in the periodical "Petersburg Anthology". He was arrested in 1849 for his involvement in revolutionary activities against the Tsar, and was sentenced to death on November 16, 1849, but the sentence was commuted to exile in Siberia just before the execution. In Siberia, his health deteriorated, and he suffered from frequent seizures. He was finally released in 1854, but demanded that he serve in Siberia.

While living in Siberia, he wrote his famous novel Notes on the House of the Dead, a novel about prison life in Tsarist Russia, an important work published by Dostoevsky during the period of serfdom reform in Russia.

Lu Xun once commented on him: Dostoevsky is a great interrogator of the human soul, he puts the men and women in the novel in unbearable circumstances to test them, not only stripping off the whiteness of the surface, torture the evil hidden underneath, but also torture the true whiteness hidden under the evil. And they refused to be put to death in a happy way, trying to let them live a long time.

Tolstoy also spoke highly of him in his letters: "I am not in good health these days, and I am reading "Notes from the Dead House". There are many places that I have forgotten and reread, and I don't know any work in modern literature, including Pushkin, that is better written.

He is recognized as a great writer.

Ivan said: "I have lived in Russia for many years, and I have seen a lot of Toshi's works. As far as I know, this manuscript is supposed to have never been published. ”

Ivan paused, and then added: "However, Mr. Han, I am not an expert in literature after all, so it is difficult to judge the literary value of this manuscript by reading it, and I cannot guarantee that this manuscript is the original work of Dostoevsky." ”

The fellow also interjected: "If it is really Tuo's work, and it has never been published, once it is released, it will cause an uproar in the world literary circle." ”

Ivan replied, "Yes." It's sure to be an uproar. Although Dostoevsky is not well-known in China, he is indeed a giant and a giant-level existence in the world literary circle. is not inferior to Tolstoy, who wrote "War and Peace". ”

Ivan looked at Han Zhou and asked, "Mr. Han, what are you going to do with this manuscript?"

Han Zhou was silent, thinking.

He remembered another famous writer, the Austrian writer Franz Kafka, who wrote The Metamorphosis.

On his deathbed, Kafka gave all the manuscripts to his close friend Brod, asking him to destroy them all. Broad, on the other hand, broke his will and published many works. But in fact, Broad did not publish all of Kafka's manuscripts that year, and his collection of other Kafka manuscripts, letters, postcards, drawings and other writers' personal belongings did not appear in public for a long time.

Later, when Broad died, the manuscripts were deposited in the home of his former secretary, Easter Hough. Hough refused to hand over the manuscript and played a cat-and-mouse literary game with the Israeli authorities, who were under pressure from the country's cultural elite. It wasn't until 1993 that the world learned that Hove had deposited the diaries in a Tel Aviv bank vault.

Han Zhou thought for a while and muttered, "Two things. First, make a photocopy of all the manuscripts, save them as PDFs, and post them online so that everyone can see them. The value of a literary work lies in its ideas, and the manuscript as a cultural artifact is secondary. ”