The brilliant “sixties” author of “The Grandmaster’s Ball”, “Morning Highway”, “Taxo Park”, “Department Store” - sharp and vibrant works known to every reader of literary magazines in the 70s - this is how we see Ilya from today Shtemler, a writer without whom Russian literature of the second half of the 20th century would have been incomplete. From the height of his years, Ilya Shtemler sees the present moment as “the time to collect stones.” “Repayment of Debt” is a book in which the author, in a memoir-confessional form, comprehends his considerable life experience and tries to give answers to questions that worried and are worrying his contemporaries.