The name of the Spanish writer Alfonso Mateo-Sagasta is still unfamiliar to Russian readers. His novel, The Ink Thieves, belongs to a rare breed of book that doesn't simply tell a story but penetrates the very fabric of the literary process. Before you lies a text that transforms the annals of literature from a series of names and dates into a space of risk and bloodshed.

The action takes place in 17th-century Spain, when Cervantes had already written the first volume of Don Quixote but had not yet written the second. It is these two events that outline the abyss into which the characters fall.
The Ink Thieves is a literary utopia, where literature is the most important sphere of human activity: publishing houses merge with gambling houses; poetry academies meet in taverns; toothaches are assuaged by verse. Here, everyone—from the highest aristocrats to drunkards and bandits—argues about literature. The latter do this with the same passion with which they are ready to kill, and sometimes for the same reasons. It's astonishing: in utterly impoverished Spain, literature becomes a competitive environment, rife with counterfeits. And then a second volume of Don Quixote appears, not written by Cervantes. A forgery! But can fiction be counterfeit?
Who wrote it? Who dared? Who could do such a thing? This is the key mystery around which this, essentially a detective story, unfolds. But most remarkable of all, the circle of suspects is the entire luminary of Spanish literature from its golden age.