Bobo is a white elephant the Turkish sultan gives to the Russian tsar. Bobo dreams of being a war elephant and serving his new sovereign. The elephant walks through modern Russia, with its war and resistance, wealth and poverty, well-fed grunts and anticipation of a nuclear strike. Bobo talks to warblers and designers, poets and embezzlers, clergy and pigs. Bobo makes history, but only in a moment of complete detachment. Six months after writing the novel, Prigozhin's Wagnerian rebellion will travel part of this path, but, unlike Bobo, it will never reach its goal. To the question ‘Who is Bobo?’ Linor Goralik answers in a Flaubertian manner: ‘Bobo is me.’