A young man accidentally stumbles upon the birthplace of Romain Gary in Vilnius. He owes his high school diploma to Gary's novel "Early Promise" and the enigmatic figure of the unassuming Monsieur Piekielny. Gary's book was the only one on his list that he had actually read, and he could indeed say a few sentences about Monsieur Piekielny. Who was this man? The fatherless Gary, then still Roman Kacew, lived with his mother in Vilnius during the 1920s. While his mother's ambition, who saw a future genius in her son, was more of a source of amusement, Monsieur Piekielny invited the young Romain for tea and asked him, should he ever become famous, to remember him and occasionally mention his name—which Gary indeed did time and again. He never forgot Monsieur Piekielny. Désérable's novel is a light-footed, knowledgeable work.