Khlebnikov is a typical little man (in Gogol’s sense) – an ordinary resident of a small shabby town in the Russian Far East. There’s not much in his life to brag about or remember: the failed dream of becoming a singer, stern wife and unfriendly stepson, dull underpaid job as a cook in a burger joint, and a shadowy petty criminal incident in the past…

Khlebnikov once withdrew his meagre salary from an ATM but the cash machine delivered more than two million rubles. This is a fortune for him, an unforeseen chance to change his life. Khlebnikov rents a room in a fleabag motel on the outskirts of town so he can come up with a plan for escaping into a brighter new world. It’s no big surprise that his plans won’t work and Khlebnikov soon finds himself caught up in events that spin out of his control: a drinking bout, getting set up by an old friend, falling for a hooker, and threats from local gangsters and the bank’s security department. Now Khlebnikov isn’t pursuing the life of his dreams but simply trying to stay alive.

Ryabov turns a conventional heist crime comedy about the aftermath of a lucky gain into an absurd and even tragic story. A vivid cast of true-to-life characters draws compassionate readers into

a rollercoaster of events. Every character shakes off cliché to offer the depth and scope of an almost ancient hero. With his sharp tongue firmly in his cheek, Ryabov tells a crime story about the misadventures of a very ordinary man with a big fortune and transforming it thanks to keen observation of human nature that embraces compassion and greed, lust and lyricism, poetry, fears, and love.

There’s no false pathos in the novel, filled with life, credibility, real human dramas, and dry humor. Ryabov’s sharp eye in depicting the realities of provincial Russia together with bewildering WTF plot twists make 777 a true reading adventure.