Robert Heinlein's novel is unusual both in plot and in its structure. This is a novel-symphony. Don't be alarmed, dear science fiction fans, it has everything you should like, including science fiction. It’s just made according to musical canons - prelude, counterpoint, interludes, there are even variations on the theme. Lazarus Long, known to readers since Heinlein’s early work “Children of Methuselah,” is a long-liver, moreover, the oldest representative of the human race (at the time of the novel’s action - 4325 th earthly year - he has already exceeded two thousand (!!!) years), having passed the way (year of birth 1912) from a US Navy cadet to... Interplanetary trader, one of the richest people in the galaxy, a successful colonizer, a generous, loving husband - and, despite this, a person who is ready to risk all his connections, his entire fortune in order to participate in an experiment with time and return to the times of childhood... The translation of the novel is published in a new edition.