Vodolazkin opens Laurus by refusing the premise of a single self: the hero 'had four names,' and the parts of a life 'have little in common with one another' — 'so little that it can seem as though they were lived by different people.' That is the definition the whole novel runs on. You are not one continuous person; you are a succession of selves, and the name is the fiction that pretends otherwise. Seen this way, changing who you are is not a betrayal of identity — it is the normal shape of identity. Ripped from the novel (translated from the Russian by the cutter): «В разное время у него было четыре имени. В этом можно усматривать преимущество, поскольку жизнь человека неоднородна. Порой случается, что ее части имеют между собой мало общего. Настолько мало, что может показаться, будто прожиты они разными людьми.» — "At different times he had four names. In this one can see an advantage, since a human life is not homogeneous. It sometimes happens that its parts have little in common with one another. So little that it can seem as though they were lived by different people."

— In our words · Source: Laurus (Eugene Vodolazkin)