The novel by the famous Hungarian novelist and playwright Gyorgy Szpiro is structured as a fictitious memoir of Lipa - Olympiada Dmitrievna Chertkova (1878-1951), a witness to Gorky's life for decades, a nurse and his last beloved woman (Diavolina - her Italian nickname received in Sorrento) . The successfully found form made it possible to show the world-famous writer through the eyes of a person close to him from inside his crowded home, in which, along with household members, mistresses and dependents, famous cultural figures and historical figures appear from Savva Morozov and Lenin to Zinoviev, Stalin and Yagoda. Gorky, seen through the eyes of Shpiro, is a figure worthy of regret, but still tragic: a man who believed that with his authority it was possible, by compromising with the authorities, to outplay them.