In 1974, 18-year-old Russian pianist Andrei Gavrilov became the sole winner of the V International Competition. Tchaikovsky. Two weeks later he made a triumphant debut at the famous Salzburg Festival, replacing the ill Svyatoslav Richter. His dizzying career was interrupted in 1979 on the initiative of the KGB. In 1985, the pianist managed to escape from the USSR. After Gavrilov's performance at Carnegie Hall, the New York Times proclaimed him "the greatest artist of our time." The book publishes the musician’s memoirs about the amazing events that happened in his life in 1973–1985. Dmitry Bykov: “Andrei Gavrilov’s book is an absolute sensation, an unprecedentedly frank story about musical and near-musical mores, about pathologies and perversions that so often accompany genius, about the tricks of the socialist authorities and the meanness of the capitalist management. This is a story about the terrible underside of beauty, about the price to pay for talent and fame. But I want the reader to discern behind all this frankness, scandalousness and dirt the childish soul of the author, who never became one of his own in any pack.”