The Bottle Inscribed with “X”, or Search for the Unknown in Alisa Ganieva’s Novel “The Groom and the Bride”

The plot of Alisa Ganieva’s novel “The Groom and the Bride” is built around the expected and failed wedding. given against the background of everyday Russian-speaking non-Russian life. The article considers a narrative series woven from Quranic and Sufi images and motifs which can be considered as one of the intrigues of the novel. The author of the article tries to “decipher” the Muslim subtext of the novel, which, presumably, is not accidental. In particular, the mythopoetics of the image of Khalilbek is examined, perforating for all texts of Alisa Ganieva (“Salam, Dalgat”, “Shaitans”, etc.), whose roots lead to the Quranic metatext, namely to the image of Khidr (or Khizir-Bobo). Whether the writer’s intention coincides with the reader’s perception is argued by the author of the article.