The article offers a mythological analysis of Pavel Zaltzman's novel -Central Asia in the Middle Ages (or Middle Ages in Central Asia)? (1930-1950), first published in 2018. The binary oppositions of the novel's existential myth considered in the article are personalized in the images of the bird Simurgh and the giant Zahhak (these two mythological images are most prominently actualized in the 21st-century literature - in Guzel Yakhina's "Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes" and Vladimir Medvedev's "Zahhok", which unexpectedly gives rise to new overtones in contemporary literary discourse). Dervish Mashrab, both a real Sufi poet and a mythological figure takes on the role of a mediator of these oppositions in the structure of the romantic myth. The categories of place, time, and transformation are considered in the context of the novel's mythopoetics. The article also raises the issue of orientalist intentions: comparing Zaltzman's prose with the works of his contemporaries (A. Platonov, L. Soloviev, S. Krzhizhanovsky), the author concludes that the novel "Central Asia...", despite the theme, is an example of neo-orientalist prose (in "post-Said" meaning). Zaltsman presents all the patterns of orientalism (e.g., the figures of a dervish, a bacha) in a different way, which is organic to the objects of his narrative and supersedes the perception of a "Western" man. The proposed analysis is aimed at a practical educational discourse related to several literary problems: the study of the work of a writer who was unknown before but who was very important for the history of literature; the study of Russian literature from the perspective of its foreign cultural text; orientalist and post orientalist studies
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