The road from Bukhara to Pandzhруд is long—especially if you must travel it blind and old. The good news is that he is guided by a boy—where else to find a better companion? Step by step they overcome the path laid out for them, and step by step it becomes clear: it is not the boy who is sighted, but the old man; and it is not the guide leading the blind one, warning him of surprises and dangers along the way—rather, the blind man leads the guide, gradually revealing the secrets of life to him.
The main character of the novel is the great Tajik-Persian poet Abu Abdullah Jafar ibn Muhammad Rudaki. Andrei Volos managed to create a vivid, rounded portrait endowed with unique traits of a living person, clearly distinguishable in the darkness of the centuries that separate us.