John Boyne's new book is not only “a novel with a key, where many of the main characters are real people, but also a psychological drama of considerable power, which clearly shows how easy it is to conquer the world if you are ready to sacrifice your own soul. After all, if you look closely, you can find stories everywhere, and where there are stories, there are plots. What else does a young man need, who himself seems to have descended from the pages of a Balzac or Forster novel? Maurice wants more than anything to become a writer, and a chance meeting with a venerable man of letters, who keeps one rather creepy skeleton in his closet, becomes the necessary impetus for the hero's career in modern commercial literature. And then the staircase to heaven is built by itself, and its steps are the heads of those on whom the foot of the new Rastignac steps. The most personal and penetrating novel of the classic of modern Irish literature is also a sharp satire on the entire current literary and publishing world. After him, no book will seem like just a book to you.The book contains obscene language!