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Not a Saint is the debut novel by Hlib Husiev, a journalist and one of the founders of the online publication Babel. And this is an attempt to draw a portrait of the hero of our time.

Artem Shcherbakov is twenty-three years old and has just moved to Kyiv in search of himself. He is unemployed and has moved in with a friend. Artem starts keeping a diary and addresses it to his father, whom he has never met. He writes down everything he has experienced.

What can he talk about at the age of 23? How he was born in the desert of Turkmenistan and learned to walk again at the age of nine after an injury. How he was involved in raiding in Mariupol, dealing drugs and working as a waiter. How he tried his luck in America, where one day a deer that jumped out of the woods ate his underpants. After selling stolen army fuel in the M-sector, he saw the Ukrainian war and became a secret agent. Not for long. And not quite secret. As he seduced many women - almost like in James Bond stories.

The protagonist grows up in an era of overthrown regimes and blurred values, looking for himself and his place around the world. All his stories are true. As are any stories about secret agents.