- Not autobiographical, but a very personal novel by Evgeny Vodolazkin with a sound previously unknown to readers. - A poignant text about music and the search for meaning when everything you lived for is suddenly taken away. At the center of the plot is a world-class virtuoso guitarist whose illness deprives him of the ability to perform at the peak of his career. How to live on if music was everything? - Multivoiced chronicles of contemporary times. Two time slices — the past and present of the hero — unfold against the backdrop of epoch-defining events: stagnation, perestroika, the coup, the Maidan. - Brisbane in the novel is a symbol of an unattainable dream and the eternal human aspiration for what lies on the other side of the globe. - Evgeny Vodolazkin is a writer and literary critic, author of the novels "Laurus" and "Aviator", laureate of the "Big Book" award, one of the leading figures of contemporary Russian literature.