Czeslaw Milosz is an outstanding Polish poet and intellectual, Nobel Prize laureate (1980). The best of his novels was written in Polish, but was first published in France (Milosz's books were banned in Poland). This is a novel about good and evil, sin and grace, predestination and freedom. This is the lost paradise of childhood on the banks of an imaginary river, this is “the search for reality, purified by the passing of time” (C. Milosz). Its main character is the author's alter ego - a growing creature constantly overcoming its boundaries. The novel will undoubtedly be included in a number of books (from Aksakov to Nabokov) that open the world of childhood. It has been translated into Russian for the first time.