Encyclopedia of fairy-tale heroes: "Old Man Hottabych". ZhZL: Lagin L.I. Old Man Hottabych - an old Soviet fairy tale from childhood Old Man Hottabych main theme

Year: 1938 Genre: story

Main characters: schoolboy Volka and wizard Hottabych.

While swimming in the lake, the young pioneer Volka finds a jug in which the real wizard Hottabych is imprisoned. The boy's curiosity leads to the fact that a wide variety of miracles begin to happen in Moscow. Volka and his friend Zheka find themselves in amazing, fabulous situations, from which they emerge with honor, because it’s not for nothing that these boys are pioneers. The friends fly on a magic carpet, travel on an icebreaker across the Arctic, save Hottabych’s brother and figure out how to pacify him, that is, they lead an active, adventurous life.

Conclusion. This fairy tale tells the story that true friendship and faith in yourself and your friends conquers everything.

Read a summary of the fairy tale Old Man Hottabych

An adventure lover and great dreamer, Volka Kostylkov, while swimming in a pond, found an amazing vessel. Diving for the third time, he pulled out from the bottom a slippery object, greenish with mud. It was all covered with amazing writing.

Without thinking twice, the boy opened it and with noise, dirt and sparks, the genie Hassan Abdurrahman ibn Hottab emerged from it. He spent many thousands of years in a jug. Evil spirits conspired to imprison him there, since he often showed good feelings. The old wizard, as a token of gratitude, swore eternal friendship and devotion to Volka. From this moment, in Moscow, and in the life of the boy, various miracles begin to happen. Dishes begin to fly and furniture begins to move without permission.

The boy does not hide anything from his new “old” friend. She tells him about her life, school, friends. And the genie, having largely made his conclusions, begins to act. Trying to help his young friend, the wizard interferes in the life of Volka ibn Alyosha, as the genie calls the boy, and creates so many absurd situations that life is interesting and fun not only for Volka, but also for many of his friends. So, during the exam in geography, Hottabych instilled in the boy such knowledge that horrified not only the teachers, but also Vladimir Kostylkov himself. A boy, during an exam, declares that in India there live ants the size of a dog, and the Earth is a disk, and so on. The student fails this test and is very upset. But he, fearing that Hottabych would take revenge on the teachers taking the exam, did not tell the old man anything about the problem that had arisen.

What happened next was even worse. Helping Volka get to an evening movie show, the wizard “rewards” him with a big beard, which greatly surprised and amazed the boy’s friend, and so that his friend does not spill the beans, the genie sends him further away - to India, where the locals receive him very warmly: they feed him deliciously and treat him amazing fruits, ride on an elephant. Volka rushes to save his friend: he flies with Hottabych on a magic carpet and returns with his friend.

It is difficult for an old wizard to live in the modern world. He does not understand the actions of people or their deeds. The genie does not know what many household items are for. Explaining their functional purpose to him is often very difficult. It is sometimes impossible for Volka and his friend Zhenya to introduce the old magician to the realities of our time. He doesn't know what a metro and trolleybus are. I have never seen such tall buildings and noisy streets, so many smartly dressed people before.

But Hottabych really likes the events he unexpectedly became a participant in. He “has fun” in the circus, and shows such miracles that magicians from different countries cannot do. At the stadium, “helping” Volka’s beloved team, at the wizard’s request, goal after goal flies into the opponents’ goal. The players themselves, of both teams, do not understand what is happening, because the balls fly by themselves, the players don’t even touch them.

Volka is not only frightened by what is happening, but also simply does not agree with this turn of events. Near the bookstall, Hottabych creates a noisy commotion, that is, he is doing weird things with all his might. It is impossible to stop and persuade the genie not to help and change anything. It takes a lot of work for both Volka and his friends to be able to save some of the unwanted or “offending” people, in the genie’s opinion, from the wizard’s spells here and there.

Then the friends go on a journey across the Arctic Ocean. Everything around surprises and amazes the guys. White silence surrounds them. From the deck of the ship "Ladoga" they see polar bears slowly wandering in the distance. The boys are in a great mood and eager for adventure. Unexpectedly, they manage to save Hottabych’s brother, Omar Yusuf, who, according to ancient tradition, must kill his savior. Genie and Volka barely have time to save Zheka from big trouble. After all, it was he who opened the next jug where this evil wizard, completely unlike Hottabych, lived. He was not only heartless, but also loved only himself, moreover, he does not believe in progress and scientific discoveries. To save the world and everyone around him from the disaster in the person of Omar, the wizard brother turns Omar into a satellite of the Moon and “sends him to surf the expanses of the starry ocean.”

Day after day passes, and the boys, friends, study well, gain deep knowledge in order to pass it on to Hottabych, who, with their help, masters and assimilates everything new and interesting that the boys tell him. The boys and the genie have an interesting, multifaceted life, full of adventures, exploits and fantasies. They live an interesting and fun life. They have big life plans. Each of them has chosen for themselves a further path and a dream to which they will strive and achieve their goal.

This fairy tale book tells the story that dreams definitely come true, you just have to want it and, of course, make an effort.

Picture or drawing Lagin - Old Man Hottabych

Summary of “Old Man Hottabych” for a reader’s diary

Name: Old Man Hottabych

Number of pages: 260. Lagin L.I. “Old Man Hottabych.” Publishing house "Samovar". Moscow. year 2012

Genre: Fairy Tale

Year of writing: 1938

Main characters

Volka Kostylkov- a seventh-grader, smart, inquisitive, decent and principled boy.

Old Man Hottabych is a powerful genie, a kind wizard.

Zhenya Bogorad is a pioneer, Volka's best friend.

Omar Yusuf is Hottabych’s brother, evil, treacherous and boastful.

Plot

One day, a simple Soviet pioneer Volka Kostylkov was incredibly lucky - while swimming in the lake, he pulled out from the bottom an ancient jug with a genie named Hassan Abdurahman ibn Hottab. After being freed from many years of imprisonment in a jug, the genie swore allegiance to the boy, and from that moment on, amazing things began to happen in Moscow.

Old man Hottabych sincerely wanted to help his young owner, but the huge gap between the eastern genie from ancient times and the Soviet boy made itself felt. As a result, both heroes constantly found themselves in funny situations. For example, in a geography lesson, Hottabych amazed the teachers with his “knowledge”, talking about ants the size of a dog and that the Earth is shaped like a flat disk. To get to an evening movie for adults, the genie gave Volka a big beard, and sent his friend Zhenya Bogorad to distant India so that he would not tell anyone about it. As a result, the boy had to be flown on a magic carpet and saved from militant Hindus.

One day, while traveling on a steamboat, Zhenya found an old jug and released Hottabych’s brother, Omar Yusuf, into the wild. Despite the fact that the genies were brothers, they were strikingly different from each other. Thus, Hassan was kind and inquisitive, while his brother was distinguished by cruelty and selfishness. Hottabych had to save Zhenka from Omar's wrath, and he had to send his brother into space. He also realized how far behind modern life he was, and decided to study. Volka and Zhenya began to study with straight A's in order to pass on their knowledge to their genie friend, who turned into a diligent student.

Retelling plan

Magic jug.
Meet the genie.
Hottabych faces Soviet reality.
Zhenya finds Hottabych's brother, Omar, and almost dies at his hands.
Hottabych protects Zhenya and sends his brother into space.
Hottabych becomes a student.

the main idea

A person with his own hands is able to create such miracles that no wizard can do.

What does it teach

Teaches you to be brave, decisive, and open to new knowledge. It also teaches you to always help those in trouble and stand up for the weak.

Review

Volka’s behavior deserves great respect - he helps the genie adapt to a new life, explains how important it is to do good deeds. Under the influence of the boy, the genie himself begins to change for the better.

Proverbs

Will and labor produce wonderful fruits.
What is gold to me, if only the sun would shine.
The sun paints the earth, and man's labor.

What I liked

I really liked how Hottabych shared his knowledge of geography during a lesson at school, and how, because of his intervention, Volka failed the exam.

Reader's diary rating

Average rating: 4.7. Total ratings received: 48.

“The Soviets have their own pride,” Vladimir Mayakovsky once wrote. This also applied to fairy tales. There was the Soviet Pinocchio - Pinocchio, the Soviet Dolittle - Aibolit, the Soviet Wizard of Oz - The Wizard of the Emerald City... Well, the Soviet genie was given to us by a writer named Lazar Iosifovich Lagin.

The book “Old Man Hottabych” by the famous Soviet writer Lazar Lagin (12/04/1903 - 06/16/1979), a native of Belarus, was probably read by every representative of the older generation.

And if you haven’t read it, you’ve certainly watched the movie of the same name. Even if you didn’t watch it, you heard the name. So, if you ask, “Do you know who Hottabych is?”, the answer will be in the affirmative. What is the popularity of this character?

Every Soviet child dreamed that one day a genie would appear to him, granting his cherished wishes with the help of a magic beard. Surely many were jealous of Volka Kostylkov, because this boy managed to ride a magic carpet and eat a free popsicle.

Old man Hottabych became a cult literary hero; children loved Lazar Lagin’s book no less than the adventures of Pinocchio or the fairy tale about Cheburashka and the crocodile Gena. But did we think as children what the writer wanted to convey to his readers, what was the meaning of this literary fairy tale?

But first, let us briefly recall the writer’s life path, because his biography is closely intertwined with his creative credo.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF LAZARUS LAGINA

In fact, he is not Lagin, but Ginzburg. From the first and last names - Lazar GInzburg - a literary pseudonym was obtained.

Our hero was born on December 4, 1903 in the Belarusian city of Vitebsk into a poor Jewish family. Immediately after graduating from school, 16-year-old Lazar goes to the civil war, a year later he joins the Communist Party (then RCP (b)), and only after (!) - the Komsomol. Which, in general, is not surprising, given that the Komsomol organization arose later than the party one. In fact, Lagin created this very Komsomol in Belarus.

Young Lagin

Lagin's further career is no less stormy and colorful. He begins to publish essays and poems in newspapers, then enters the Minsk Conservatory in the vocal department, but due to difficulties with music theory, he quits his studies.

In 1924, Lagin was already in Moscow, where he graduated from the Institute of National Economy with a degree in political economy. For some time Lagin served in the Red Army. And finally, in 1930, he completely immersed himself in literary activity.

His career is gradually going up. Since 1934, Lagin has been deputy editor-in-chief of the Krokodil magazine, since 1936, a member of the Writers' Union, and in 1938, his tale about Hassan Abdurrahman ibn Hottab was published...

“Old Man Hottabych” was published as a separate edition in 1940.

Lazar Lagin in the Navy

Soon the war began, and Lazar Lagin did not sit out in the rear. He defended Odessa and Sevastopol, and ended his military career in Romania as part of the Danube flotilla. In battles with the Nazis, he used not only weapons, but also his literary talent, writing war songs and biting satire.

At the end of the war, Lagin returned as a correspondent to Krokodil, writing the satirical “Offensive Tales” and several novels in the style of “social fiction”. It was for his science fiction novel “Island of Disappointment” that he was awarded the Stalin Prize. By the way, Lagin considered the best of his works to be the novel “The Blue Man,” about how a student from the history department of Moscow State University finds himself in the past and participates in the birth of a revolutionary movement.

But none of the writer’s books could surpass the popularity of his fairy tale Old Man Hottabych.

And in 1955, Lagin released a new edition of his fairy tale. As a result, the volume of the book Old Man Hottabych almost doubled. Some scenes were added, others were greatly changed, and others were simply removed. But since 1999, it has become the rule to publish Old Man Hottabych in the 1938 edition. As a reader, it is difficult to make a choice between two versions of a fairy tale: each has its own advantages and disadvantages.

We will focus on the analysis of the original version (1938).

WHAT IS THE MYSTERY OF THE FAIRY TALE OLD MAN HOTTABYCH?

“I don’t know if anyone paid attention to the striking coincidences in the story with another work created around the same time.
I mean “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov.
Read from this angle, “Old Man Hottabych” gives reason for thought.
In both cases, a character endowed with supernatural power finds himself in absolutely materialistic Moscow. He is not afraid of a man with a gun (Mauser), personifying power. And the very omnipotence of this power seems illusory” (From G. Alyunin’s article “The fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it”).

Take Hottabych, who is he?

- What is unclear here? - anyone who read the book of the writer Lagin as a child will be surprised. — Hassan Abdurrahman ibn Hottab is a child of the Arab East, a Muslim. The name is Arabic, the clothes are Arabic, it remembers Allah... By the way, the powerful ruler Suleiman ibn Daoud imprisoned him in a jug for more than three thousand years. Also an Arab, I guess!

Here, as young readers say, is the first “plug”: Islam today is a little over fourteen centuries old. Three thousand years ago no one had heard of Suleiman, but everyone knew the brilliant Solomon, the builder of Jerusalem and the son of the Israeli king David.

“Gag” is the first, but not the only one. Here's the next one! Let's remember the scene at the circus. Do you remember the spell that Hottabych casts? It sounds unpronounceable “lehododilikraskalo”; its meaning to our ears is unclear. For Arabic, I must say, too. But religious Jews, having easily broken this heap of words into separate words, will also be able to sing it!

“Leho dodi likras kalo,” they will chant on a Friday evening, welcoming the arrival of Saturday. And this will be the first line of the Jewish liturgical hymn.

“Go, my friend, meet your bride” - this is what Hottabych shouted in 1938 and is still sung by Jews on Friday evenings. And the bride - she is Saturday!

It is difficult to say today whether the editor of the newspaper “Pionerskaya Pravda” and the Soviet censors knew what kind of “leho...” this was. Nevertheless, the publication of the story took place, although Yiddish itself had just been crossed out from among the state languages and removed from the coat of arms of the Belarusian SSR... It is worth noting that the intellectual professionalism of the writers and editors of that time was quite high, therefore, as the press writes today, the editors did not know Yiddish and therefore missed the fairy tale for publication; the probability is low.

Probably, the background was different - do not forget that it was 1938, tense relations with Germany, where the persecution of Jews began.

But let's continue about the writer's hints in the fairy tale.

The writer, as if not feeling any danger, continues to give us secret signs.

Even before shouting out a strange spell, Old Man Hottabych pulls out 13 hairs from his beard and tears them into small pieces: without them, the magic does not work. But why exactly 13? Needless to say, this is an accident! Maybe because the genie is an evil spirit? Although we are not talking about any black deeds here.

On the contrary, a little earlier Old Man Hottabych, carried away by his omnipotence and clearing the circus of orchestra members, artists and spectators, now, at Volka’s request, returns to their places the victims of his vanity scattered on four sides of the inhabited world. That is, he performs a good deed - precisely with the help of an outlandish spell and these very 13 hairs!

Well, who does the number 13 help to do good and useful deeds? In Christian civilization it brings nothing but misfortune: it’s not for nothing that they call it the devil’s dozen. For Muslims, 13 is in no way distinguished from a number of other numbers. And only among the Jews is it happy: it unites disparate parts into a whole, and restores the lost harmony. So the old genie pulls out exactly 13 hairs - and in the blink of an eye, all the people scattered around the world find themselves together again under the circus big top. Deafening applause is heard, and the lost harmony ceases to be lost.

Lagin's books are scattered with names and titles whose roots lie in Hebrew, and events that originate in Jewish traditions. At the same time, they are hidden no worse than Hottabych’s origins.

Notes in the margins
When Lazarus turns thirteen, his parents will gather guests for a bar mitzvah - a celebration of growing up. Nowadays, boys are given money on this occasion; in the past they were given books. There will be a lot of books, as well as guests.
One of them - the recently published “Copper Jug” in Russia by the Englishman F. Anstey - Lazar will immediately single out from the total.
Looking from a distance into the century, you understand how timely this book ended up in the boy’s hands. Growing up will coincide with the beginning of his passion for the East. Four years later, when Lazar, who had just graduated from school, was forced to flee to Moscow with his parents from the pogroms committed in Minsk by Polish legionnaires, he met the writer Shklovsky.
He will ask what the young man is reading, and will hear in response: the tales of “A Thousand and One Nights.” Seven years later, the future author of the book, Old Man Hottabych, will enthusiastically retell the same fairy tales, sitting at the bedside of a sick boy. And ten years later, this boy will become the prototype of Volka ibn Alyosha.

WHY DID LAGIN ENCRYPTED HIS WORKS?

So why, in fact, did the writer “cipher” his works, hide secret references to a forbidden language in them? And all this in a country that was “merciless” towards people during the years of the so-called “Great Terror”, propagated today by liberals and the West?!

Jewish codes - written, cultural, Judaic and Kabbalistic (Lagin also has a lot of these) - are not at all a fig in the pocket for the Soviet regime, but a connection with childhood and youth. Connection with Minsk. In multinational Moscow, neither Yiddish nor Hebrew was heard. There was nothing there to remind us of the traditions that filled the childhood of a boy from the Pale of Settlement.

Yes, and Lagin would not have been honored with Soviet power! He was a deeply Soviet man who firmly believed in the ideals of justice, which at that time seemed neither wild nor unattainable to many. And he also has this faith from Minsk - here he joined the party, here he headed the Jewish bureau of the Belarusian Komsomol, here he created the newspaper “Red Smena” (the ancestor of the “Chyrvonaya Zmena”).

It’s just that when Lagin wrote a children’s fairy tale, his childhood spoke in it. Something without which a writer ceases to be a writer, just as any person cannot be a Human if there is no connection with childhood in his soul.

“Childhood is that great time of life when the foundation is laid for the entire future moral person,” said the great Russian teacher N.V. Shelgunov (1824 - 1891).”

But this tale is not only literary, but also fantastic.

WHAT FICTION FICTION DO READERS NEED?

Science fiction writers somehow don’t think twice about allowing the heroes of their works to achieve certain goals, most often boiling down to personal well-being or achieving world peace (an example of this is Hollywood films). Lazar Lagin looked at this situation differently - the Old Man Hottabych he presented turned out to be a powerful creature capable of changing reality, but at the same time he was overloaded with outdated ideas about reality, the return of which no one living today would wish.

From the first pages it becomes clear to the reader that no good can be expected from Hottabych. It does more harm than good. Of course, if the vessel were opened by someone else, who had different, selfish, beliefs in life, not imbued with Soviet everyday life, the genie’s skills would definitely be useful to such a person. For the pioneer Volka, the genie was unnecessary, just a burden that he would have to educate, showing him by personal example what to do in this or that case. If a person has no temptations, then there is no need for a genie: everything is available to everyone equally, no one cares about personal well-being, people have work, they know no need. This is exactly how Lazar Lagin portrays the Soviet Union to the reader. You can’t even give to the beggars, since there are no beggars in the country.

So is it possible to change the world for the better, given the appropriate opportunities? Using the example of Old Man Hottabych, it becomes clear that we only imagine the idyll of today, which should be deeply disgusting to those who lived in the past and who will live in the future.

It is this truth that is proposed to be taken as the main idea of the work of Lazar Lagin. There is no need to try to adjust the morals of others to your ideas about what should be, otherwise those whose lives we try to change will have an equally destructive impact on our own way of life.

This is what we felt during the reign of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, when our liberals chose the collective West as the genie (Old Man Hottabych).

Notes in the margins
The image of the genie requires some explanation.
Jinns are heroes of Arab mythology, most often acting in a role similar to the more familiar demons or devils.
In Western culture, genies gained popularity after the release of the collection of fairy tales “A Thousand and One Nights”.
In myths, there were four types of genies: the evil efreets who commanded fire, the cruel werewolves gulas, the all-powerful rational marids and weak forces. The genies lived in a parallel world where people could not go. Even translated, the word “genie” means “hidden.”

Old man Hottabych was a marid - these higher genies could be both evil and good, they were able to predict the future and help in achieving goals.

They looked like tall pale people with white beards, they knew how to release fire from their nostrils and turn into ethereal flying creatures. But it was the Marids who often became captives of various objects: for example, rings or lamps - in the fairy tale about Aladdin or bottles - in the story of Hottabych.

The Islamic prophet and Jewish king Suleiman ibn Daoud, whom Hottabych served and was a slave of his ring, is better known as King Solomon.

He had extraordinary wisdom, could talk to animals, control the wind and had power over all creatures, including genies. The Hottabovich brothers no longer wanted to be under the rule of Suleiman, for which they were punished by imprisonment in bottles.

By the way, there are many historical absurdities in Hottabych’s biography. In the fairy tale, the genie is a Muslim and commemorates the Baghdad caliph Harun Al-Rashid, a real historical figure and at the same time the hero of the “1001 Nights” fairy tales. However, if Solomon put the genie in the bottle, then Old Man Hottabych could not profess Islam, which appeared much later, and certainly could not know Harun.

By the way, about the caliphs. In Jerusalem today you can see Omar ibn Khattab Square. This was the name of another famous Arab caliph (585 - 644), who was personally converted to Islam by the Prophet Muhammad himself.

And this is what L. Lagin says about Old Man Hottabych:

“According to the concept of the genies from ancient fairy tales and those whose wishes they fulfilled in these fairy tales, this was the most complete human happiness that one could only dream of.
Hundreds and hundreds of years have passed since these tales were first told, but ideas about happiness have long been associated, and in capitalist countries, many people to this day are still associated with chests full of gold and diamonds, with power over others people (emphasis added).
...Well, what if such a genie suddenly came to our country, where there are completely different ideas about happiness and justice, where the power of the rich was destroyed long ago and forever, and where only honest work brings happiness, honor and glory to a person?”

HOW THE MODERN SEREBRENNIKOVS INTERPRET THE TALE

Still from the film “Hot@bych” 2008

In the 2006 film “Hot@bych” there are no longer any ideological lack of silver, and the genie is a hardened and brutal cynic.

Natalya Lagina (writer's daughter)

“I managed to get several film adaptations banned, but when I saw this film, I swooned. All that was left there was the name of the father's character and the fact that he came out of the bottle. Well, come up with your own “Pokhabych”, and don’t speculate on the brand. The old man Hottabych from the children’s book cannot be interested in women with tits on TV and go “take a leak” and say “wow” every word.

It is difficult to add anything to these words. But, I would like to hope that the adventures of the Soviet Hottabych did not end with the Soviet era. The book is still interesting, instructive, and let’s hope that the modern generation will also find it interesting and useful.

AFTERWORD

In 1979, the All-Union recording studio “Melodiya” released a record with the musical “Hottabych” by composer G. Gladkov. And the heroes of the famous fairy tale sang in the voices of popular actors M. Boyarsky, L. Gurchenko, I. Muravyova...

Lazar Iosifovich Lagin no longer had to see the record. He died on June 16, 1979. In Moscow, on Chernyakhovsky Street, there is a house, noticeable with a memorial plaque with the inscription “The writer Konstantin Simonov lived here...”. Lazar Iosifovich Lagin also lived in the same house in recent years. True, there is still no memorial plaque testifying to this.

It’s strange and offensive... For some reason, there is a plaque for Solzhenitsyn, whose work the majority of our country is against, but there is no memorial plaque for the writer, whose fairy tale is loved by all generations both in Russia and in the post-Soviet space.

In Belarus, in Vitebsk, there is a decorative sculptural composition near the Lyalka puppet theater, a monument to the old man Hottabych. Belarusians honor their famous people who left their mark on both Soviet and Belarusian culture.

Isn’t it time for us to pay tribute to our beloved writers, who proclaimed Justice in their works, by erecting monuments to people like Lagin, and not to Solzhenitsyn.

A Soviet pioneer releases a genie from a thousand-year imprisonment. After magical and funny adventures, the ancient genie is rehabilitated and finds his place in the modern world.

The story begins with an acquaintance with one of the main characters - Vladimir Kostylkov, a simple Soviet pioneer who was lucky enough to get an ancient jug from the bottom while swimming in the lake. Of course, curiosity does not allow him to take the find to the police station without looking inside, and it is from this moment that real miracles begin to happen in Moscow. After all, the real genie Hassan Abdurrahman ibn Hottab has been languishing in a jug for several thousand years, and after his release he swears allegiance to his young savior.

The temporary gap between the Soviet Aladdin, Volka, and the ancient Eastern genie Hottabych turns out to be so huge that the two heroes constantly find themselves in the most ridiculous situations. Burning with the desire to help the incomparable Volka ibn Alyosha, Hottabych hurries with him to the geography exam and “amazes” ordinary Soviet teachers with his extensive knowledge of the subject. Examiners are surprised to learn that the main representatives of the fauna in India are gold-bearing ants the size of a dog, the Earth is shaped like a flat disk, and the horizon is called “the edge where the crystal dome of heaven touches the edge of the Earth.” The first miracle created by Hottabych ends with Volka's crushing failure in the exam.

The upset pioneer does not dare to tell the genie that the exam was not passed “excellently”, rightly fearing that the genie’s wrath will fall on the “ignorant teachers.” However, going to the cinema turns into an even greater disaster for Volka. The afternoon show has already ended, and in order to please his saddened master and help him get to the cinema for the evening show for adults, the genie rewards sixth-grader Kostylkov with a thick beard. And Volka’s friend, Zhenya Bogorad, met at the cinema, is sent to distant India to stop the spread of rumors about the bearded boy. But Zhenya does not stay in India for long - Volka forces Hottabych to fly after him on a magic carpet and snatches Zhenya from the embrace of too friendly Indians.

No matter how hard Zhenya and Volka try to accustom Hottabych to the realities of modern life, the genie, accustomed to ancient Eastern orders, continues to get into trouble, causing a commotion near a street kiosk, in a circus, at a stadium... He also has noble deeds to his name: for example, he upsets an inhuman, mercantile foreigner, sends boys who have behaved badly to the police station and even brings justice to Italy.

At the very end of the story, the friends go on a cruise across the Arctic Ocean on the Ladoga steamship. Zhenya finds an old jug and releases Hottabych's brother, Omar Yusuf, from it. The brothers are completely different. If Hassan is a good-natured genie, then Omar is heartless and selfish. According to the custom of the genies, he immediately tries to kill the one who released him, and Zhenya is saved only by the intervention of Hottabych. Omar is stubborn and does not believe in many scientific discoveries, for example, that the Moon is a satellite of the Earth. He goes to check it out and becomes a prisoner in Earth's orbit. After talking with his brother, Hottabych realizes how behind the times he is and begins to make up for lost time.

Time passes. The guys study with straight A's, because they need to pass on all the knowledge they have acquired to Hottabych, who has become a very diligent student. Zhenya chooses to become a doctor, while Volka dreams of becoming a radio designer. Hottabych first dreams of working in the Arctic, but his respectable appearance and a questionnaire in which he writes the honest truth prevent him from getting there. Nothing prevents the genie from turning into a young man, but he no longer wants to deceive. Over time, Hottabych takes Volka’s example and also becomes interested in radio engineering. At this point the author says goodbye to the genie and his young friends.