The article is concerned with the study of Russian literature by Italian philology students. The research is based on the book "Songs of the Shaman's Mom" written by Yana Mori. The article aims at determining how and to what extent Italians understand the Russian literary text. The research tasks are to describe the specific perception of the text in question and evaluate its translation into Italian. The authors use a comprehensive approach, including observation and generalization methods at the intersection of literary criticism, linguistics, psychology and semiotics. They comment on some characters and text realities and reveal that Italians did not find it difficult to perceive the meaning of "Songs of the Shaman's Mom" despite the abundance of quasi-real phenomena. The authors also compare different translations into Italian and analyze samples that indicate linguistic and cultural differences. The complex study of "Songs of the Shaman's Mom" has been conducted for the first time.