The new book by the famous poetess Novella Matveeva consists of her memoirs, essays and best poems, which is natural, since her prose is inseparable from her poetry. K. Chukovsky, S. Marshak, L. Utesov were delighted with the bright romantic poems of N. Matveeva. Many people know the charm of her famous songs “What a big wind...”, “Moldovan Gypsy”, “My caravan walked through the desert...”, “The girl from the tavern”, “Oh, how long, long have we been going...”, “Embroidering a colored scarf... "and others. Poetry lovers know with what perfection Matveeva masters irony, how witty and dangerous her epigrams, pamphlets, and political invective are. And her satire and journalism are a challenge to all world and domestic scoundrels and scoundrels, slanderers of Russia. The poetess's memoirs can be defined in her own words as a “personal epic.” This epic contains glimpses of the world culture on which she grew up. So, in the book there is a brilliant essay-dream “The Experience of Dreams” about the solution to the murder of Christopher Marlowe, others have the golden reflection of the artistic experience of Hoffmann, Kafka... The narrative “The Ball Left in the Sky”, dedicated to the “morning light of childhood”, is filled with that beauty and mystery, childish trust in the world, which remain in the memory from reading the best pages about the childhood of S. Aksakov, L. Tolstoy...