In 2001, the Russian publishing house Ad Marginem issued a collection of short novels Fingernails, which immediately captured the attention of the media and critics.

The collection includes 24 short stories and a novel of the same title, the main characters of which are two pupils who possess paranormal abilities studying in a boarding school for demented children.

Through all a set of avant-garde literary techniques, through the philology of the text and dense erudition of the young writer, not inferior to either Umberto Eco, or Milorad Pavić, the unshakable centuries-old spiritual values of the Russian people are vehemently defended".

[9] The protagonist of the novel learns that some books of a forgotten Soviet writer possess mystical properties, and various groups of readers are waging a fierce battle to get them.

As was noted by Anna Kuznetsova in the Znamya magazine, "Mikhail Elizarov's prose seems to be evolving like Vladimir Sorokin's: from scandalous shockingness to fiction rich in intellectual content".

[15] The plot unfolds itself around the protagonist who works in the funeral business in modern Russia and meets a mysterious young lady covered in tattoos.