About the book: 2019 / The famous book series “The Lives of Remarkable People” dedicated three volumes to Benedict Spinoza in different years and centuries: G. Paperny (1895), M Belenky (1964), P. Lyukimson (2018). Their authors are highly experienced, learned, serious people. The Macedonian writer Gotse Smilevski was twenty-seven years old at the time of writing his first novel (2002). Bold, sometimes on the verge of a foul, confused in many ways, he strangely “catches” with his desperately defenseless personal intonation, “the need to overcome loneliness.” Spinoza turns out to be a mirror for Smilevsky, into which he looks in order to better see himself.