Eva Berard's book is a fascinating and at the same time historically accurate story about the difficult life of Ilya Ehrenburg, a Russian European, a Jewish “sorrowful man”, whose life passed between Russia, France and the Soviet Union. Poet and revolutionary, famous war correspondent and deft propagandist of the Stalinist country, defender of the “offended” and successful writer... Four wars, two revolutions, dozens of trips around the world as an official “dove of peace.” In the study of Eva Berard, the writer’s fate is reconstructed on the basis of rich archival material and numerous testimonies of contemporaries, against the backdrop of a vivid picture of Russian, Soviet and French life. The eye of the French historian, like Stendhal’s “mirror,” reflects impartially, but not without humor, the twisted fate of the hero in the web of history. Eva Berard-Zarzycka was born and raised in Poland, received higher education at Yale University in the USA, lives and conducts research in France.