This book arose from Dürrenmatt's trip to Israel in 1974 and deals with the Arab-Israeli conflict, a topic that is no less relevant today than it was thirty-five years ago. The experience gained in Israel turned the inner world of the famous playwright upside down. Returning to his homeland, he admits “... it’s hard to imagine that I myself once composed plays, wrote in general, and that it’s even possible to write again.” For obvious reasons, the book could not be published in the USSR, and now it is being published in Russian for the first time.