“Only a Rose,” a new novel by Muriel Barbery, familiar to Russian readers from “The Elegance of a Hedgehog,” talks about an unusual woman and a country that not everyone can experience. Rose in Japan for the first time. The father she had never seen died and left her a letter. And the incredible happened: having traveled a long way, she found herself in Kyoto, in the house of her father, who was collecting and selling works of contemporary Japanese art. The young woman experiences bitterness and anger, because her life, who did not know her father and lost her mother early, was essentially stolen from her. And yet every day, under the guidance of Paul, her father’s assistant, she moves along a strange route, discovering flowers, trees, palaces, temples of the ancient city, and at the same time recognizing a new herself. The main miracle of life is revealed to her - love. For the first time in Russian!