Czeslaw Milosz is an outstanding Polish poet and intellectual and a Nobel Prize nominee. The best of his novels was written in Polish, but first published in France (in Poland, Milos’ books were banned). This is a novel about good and evil, about sin and grace, predestination and freedom. This is the lost paradise of childhood on the banks of a fictional river, this is "the search for reality, purified by the time passing" (C. Milos). Its main character - the author's alter ego - is a growing being that constantly overcomes its boundaries. The novel will undoubtedly be included in a number of books (from Aksakov to Nabokov) that open the world of childhood. It is translated into Russian for the first time.