The article studies the genre originality specifics of the work by Marcel Bayanovich Galiev, a People’s Writer of the Republic of Tatarstan. We systematize the material according to the extent his work has been studied. The analysis is based on Marcel Galiev’s unfinished work “Tima, yashasen” (“Leave Him Alone, Let Him Live”). The book was conceived as a work in two parts, but for personal reasons, the author limited himself to creating the first part. Marcel Galiev defined the genre of his book as a novelnovella. The article proves that novel-oriented thinking is inherent in the writer. In terms of content, this is an autobiographical work, in which the general is intertwined with the personal, the concrete with the individual and the universal with the national. Marcel Galiev uses a multi-level structure where biographical, family-everyday, socio-historical and natural-cyclical forms of artistic time are harmoniously intertwined. As the plot develops, the novel turns into a mirror of the era, showing family life and social life, the patriarchal life of the Tatar village and the capital life of Kazan and Moscow. The reader forms an idea of the material values and spiritual culture of Soviet citizens. The writer’s creative manner is characterized by deep psychologism, analyticity and lyricism. Genre displacement occurs through marginalia and individual inserts in other genre forms. This frame novella incorporates an autobiographical novel.