It happens that a person we have never met, or a place we have never been to, seems strangely familiar to us. Intellectually we understand that this is impossible. But the heart insists on its own... Sometimes, when we almost believe that our life is not without meaning, a stupid accident mixes up the cards and ends the plot. And sometimes the same chance makes us feel the presence of a miracle and realize our destiny. This is a new book by British writer Sebastian Faulks, author of the world bestseller “And the Birds Sang...”. Five short stories, connected like a symphony, tell about five different destinies. The characters in the novel live in different eras and belong to different circles of society. Joining the fighters of the French Resistance, English philologist Geoff Talbot does not know that the hell of a German concentration camp awaits him. London ragamuffin Billy ends up in a Victorian workhouse, but then “breaks out among the people.” At the end of the 21st century, Italian neurologist Elena Duranti makes a discovery on a global scale, proving that the human “I” has a physical nature. The dark peasant woman Jeanne from a French village lives in the Napoleonic era in captivity of medieval prejudices. The brilliant Anya King, author and performer of folk songs, is making a splash in America in the 1960s... But where did Elena get the Madonna figurine that belonged to Jeanne? What is this mysterious source from which Anna draws her piercing images? And by what mysterious means does her lover, rock guitarist Jack, end up in an old Victorian workhouse?