The prose by the contemporary Russian writer Kirill Ryabov is deceptively simple and bleak. Known for their pithy and cinematographic phrases, dynamic plot and succinct portrayals of the characters’ appearance and speech,Ryabov’s books remain highly seductive for critics and offer numerous angles of interpretation. A. Gusamova’s article is written in a manner that is unmistakably Ryabov’s, i. e., only a few lines of text suffice to reveal the main message: the paradox of Ryabov’s books is that most of them remain unwritten. A two-hundred-page paperback constitutes the bare essentials.Everything omittable has been left out: descriptions, the characters’ personal traits, as well as the usual psychological particulars. Ryabov’s poetics is founded in omitted elements. Gusamova seeks to reconstruct them in her analysis and interpretation of the milestones marking Ryabov’s artistic evolution. The article focuses on the development of the existential and moral agenda which plays a key role in the artistic world of Ryabov’s prose.