In her new book, Genna Sosonko introduces the reader to the seventh world chess champion Vasily Vasilyevich Smyslov. The author often played and communicated a lot with the hero of the book, and this allowed him to show Smyslov’s life line in its amazing harmony. It was the conscious harmony that became his guiding star that allowed Smyslov to live a long life without losing his breath. Sosonko's book is not a biography, but a look at the life of an extraordinary person in its different guises, both chess and music. Photo from the author’s archive and the magazine “64-SHO”.