Veniamin Aleksandrovich Kaverin, a significant Russian writer, author of novels and stories (“The End of the Khaza”, “Nine Tenths of Fate”, “Bandalarist, or Evenings on Vasilievsky Island”, etc.), short stories and fairy tales, became known throughout the country thanks to the adventure novel “Two Captains”, which is still extremely popular and has been filmed many times. The novel “Before the Mirror” was written by Kaverin at the age of seventy and is often recognized as his best book.... It all started at a gymnasium ball: amid confetti, streamers and thunder of music, the serious Kostya Karnovsky and the charming Liza Turaeva met and danced together the whole evening. In the next twenty years, fate rarely gave them meetings - but all this time Lisa wrote to Karnovsky, her either friend or lover. These were wonderful letters, funny, tender, and philosophical, from Perm, from St. Petersburg-Petrograd, Yalta, Constantinople and Paris, where the girl bravely went to study painting... Will Karnovsky and Liza finally be together, will the artist Turaeva achieve recognition , will he return to his homeland - and what will happen to the heroes, whose youth was spent in pre-revolutionary Russia, now, “at the crossroads of times”?..