Konstantin Paustovsky is an outstanding Russian writer, whose novels, novellas, short stories, and essays are rightfully considered classics of 20th-century Russian literature and have been translated into many languages. He is the author of remarkable lyrical and autobiographical prose, filled with a love for Russian nature and culture. For Soviet readers, Paustovsky embodies human and literary nobility, the conscience of the era. He was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but only for political reasons did he not receive this honorable award.

Paustovsky worked on 'A Story of a Life,' one of his most important works, for 18 years. According to Konstantin Kedrov, 'in the first chapters of 'A Story of a Life,' Bunin divined the renaissance of Russian literature.' We are presented with a glimpse of the writer's life—from childhood to the time when he realized his literary success. Autobiographical and intimate personal elements are combined here with the historical and universally significant, reflections on the past with the present. This edition contains the first three of the six books in 'A Tale of a Life.'