A boy born blind in a Ukrainian country house grows up learning the world through sound, and becomes a musician. Korolenko wrote it in 1886 after his own years in Siberian exile, and it is the gentlest thing he did - the argument is that a life is not diminished by what it lacks. This edition pairs Aline Delano's translation with ten bound plates by Munch, Kuindzhi, Shishkin and Siemiradzki, and twenty-two illustrations restored and coloured for this volume.