The fate of this novel - the author's first experience in prose - is unusual, although not surprising, because it reflects the rifts of time that seemed motionless and insurmountable. Before leaving for Israel, the author, being, as befits a writer, in nervous tension and absentmindedness of thought, I gave the manuscript for safekeeping until better times to one of my reliable acquaintances, almost immediately forgetting who. In the vague consciousness of the pre-departure bustle, it simply fell out of the author’s memory to whom he handed over his first “novel of youth” - “Over the Crater’s Edge” for safekeeping. In June 2008, the author represented Israel at a book fair in Odessa, a city with which many memories are associated. And then, at Passage, an old acquaintance, a poet and philosopher, appeared. “Do you know that I have your manuscript?” “The manuscript?” Bulgakov is right again: manuscripts don’t burn. “And the wind returns to normal.”