About the book: 2015 / “Do you know what love is? True love? Have you loved so fiercely that you were ready to step into the flames of hell? I am yes.” With these words begins the famous film story dedicated to the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani. Thus began the story of the fleeting and tragic love of two geniuses at the beginning of the century: Anna Akhmatova and Amedeo Modigliani. What do the Russian poetess and the Italian artist have in common? Anna Andreevna herself wrote about this novel like this: “...everything that happened was for both of us the prehistory of our lives: his – very short, mine – very long.” The author of this book, Boris Mikhailovich Nosik, spent the first decades of his life in Russia, but for many years now he has preferred to live in France. He, like no one else, was able to understand the incredible love story of Akhmatova and Modigliani. It was her author who considered it fundamental in the biography of Anna Andreevna Akhmatova.