Russian travel literature boasts an impressive history. Ever since 15th-century merchant Afanasy Nikitin became one of the first Christians to write a detailed description of India, Russians have penned travelogues and marveled at the sights and mores of foreign lands.

But while yesterday's books were written by explorers, today's are written by tourists. A telling example is "The Dead Can Dance" (Mertviye Mogut Tantsevat), recently published by St. Petersburg's Amphora. The author is named only by his e-mail address, nobody01@inbox.ru, and the book's cover invites readers to guess "which famous Russian writer wrote the book."

It's not clear why the publishers call the author a famous writer; this suggests that they're not being totally sincere about the anonymity thing. The book is subtitled "A Guidebook to the End of the World," and the general mood is indeed rather apocalyptic. The 30-year-old narrator describes his haphazard journeys across Europe, Asia, North Africa and the United States, as well as the former Soviet empire. These are interspersed with sex scenes, generalizations about life in Cairo or Istanbul and lots of simplified history, often inaccurate.

The publishers claim that the author works as a guide for Russian tourists in Alexandria. A friend of mine once had a similar job in Athens, and he says that after all his stories about Plato and Pericles, tourists always asked about two things: how long he had lived in Greece and whether he was married. That's exactly what Mr. Nobody01 tells his readers: fragments from his rather uneventful personal life, mixed with historical anecdotes.

This isn't enough to form a novel, though, so he throws in some views about global affairs. For example, he says Russia is decomposing, the world's oil is running out and we are living at the end of history. Some of his observations are ridiculous, others banal. What baffles me most, however, is his acute feeling of belonging to a lost generation -- which would be more or less my generation. He sincerely thinks his feeling is universal, but I can't relate at all, and most people I know wouldn't either.

Whoever he is (reviewers have winked at Ilya Stogoff, the "counterculture" guru), he has written a shallow but very readable work. The book claims that its author "saw all mentioned artifacts with his own eyes." Well, Russians have a wonderful saying: "He lies like an eyewitness."