The book by Yakov Gordin combines memoirs and essays about Joseph Brodsky, written over the past twenty years. The first version of the memoirs, dedicated to the arrest, trial and exile, published during the poet’s lifetime and with his consent in 1989, was approved by him. The version offered to the reader covers the period from 1957 - the moment the author met Brodsky - until the mid-1990s. The essays are devoted to both an analysis of the poet’s life attitudes and deciphering the multi-layered meaning of his poems and plays, his relationship with fundamental human ideas about the world, in particular his persistent attempts to build a poetic utopia that opposes the tragedy of death.