“Coasting Voyage” can hardly be called a memoir. Rather, it is a memoir novel, consisting of numerous short stories, serious or humorous. They are united by the image of the main character, who, in his declining years, sums up the results of a long, “tastefully and intelligently” lived life. This life had everything - hungry youth, early and loud literary fame, “the fight for world peace,” bitter disappointment in “hardware socialism”, prisons, exile... Numerous novels - written, filmed, staged - and novels that connected him with many women (their heroines, however, are chastely designated by one name - Maria). Among those with whom fate brought him together were celebrities such as Picasso, Ehrenburg, Neruda, Sartre, and unknown people. The geography of the narrative is extremely wide; the chronological framework (which the author pointedly neglects) covers almost our entire century.