Golden Rose

Once an old Parisian janitor saved dust year after year that he swept from the jewelry workshops. One day, the collected precious specks of gold were enough for a wonderful rose – a gift for a young woman he had known since she was a child. This poignant story struck Paustovsky with its similarity to the writer's work, which also creates something beautiful from the dust of encounters and farewells, wanderings and journeys, unfamiliar faces and stories. Thus begins "Golden Rose" – an unusual and stylistically unmatched work in Russian literature, deeply original, in which autobiographical motifs easily and naturally blend with fictionalized-biographical ones, and essayistic ones with philosophical.