According to an Irish legend, anyone who survives a lightning strike under a tree will live to be a hundred years old. Dominic Matei, a seventy-year-old classical philologist from the Romanian province, is struck by lightning on Easter night in 1938 in front of the Bucharest train station, and his charred body is taken to the hospital. Contrary to all expectations, Matei not only survives but begins to grow younger. Mircea Eliade's famous novel "Youth Without Youth" (The Centenarian) has been adapted into a film by director Francis Ford Coppola, who has written the afterword for this edition. The film is set to premiere in early summer 2007.