Thirty-year-old Francois-Henri Deserables, once a professional hockey player, has become a famous writer in the five years since the publication of his first book. The novel “A Certain Mr. Pekelny” - an unprecedented event - was included in the lists of all the main literary awards in France and received several prestigious awards. The young Frenchman, the author’s alter ego and an ardent admirer of Romain Gary, sets out in search of one of the characters in Gary’s novelized autobiography “Promise at Dawn” . A certain Mr. Pekelny, a little man with a beard reddened by tobacco, does not give him peace. Did he die at the hands of the Nazis, like almost all Vilnius Jews, or did he manage to escape? And did he really exist? In the course of this search, the author takes the reader in the footsteps of Romain Gary himself - from Vilnius, where he spent his childhood, through the Second World War to the heights of his diplomatic and literary career, including the unique literary hoax of Gary-Azhar and the mysterious suicide.