In almost a century-old biography of the writer, publicist and public figure Daniil Granin fit a variety of events — first five-year plan and the Great Patriotic war, the Khrushchev thaw and Gorbachev's perestroika, disputes "physicists" and "lyricists", the collapse of the Soviet Union and the difficult birth of the new Russia. All this Daniel was able to understand, feel and realize in his works. Whatever he wrote about — about the life and work of scientists, about the tragic years of the war and the blockade, or about the distant past — in the center of his attention has always been the problem of morality, the moral choice facing each person. He himself has repeatedly made this choice, speaking for justice and mercy, for the preservation of the historical appearance of his native Leningrad-St. Petersburg. The first book about Granin in the series "ZHZL" comes to the 100th anniversary of the writer and is composed of his own memories (he called them "quirks of memory"), documents and testimonies of contemporaries.