“You need to experience the world with your wings, the country with your wheels, the city with your feet.” These words belong to the writer Sergei Sergeevich Smirnov, who visited many countries. S.S. Smirnov spent a month in Peru in the winter of 1969 with a delegation from the USSR Writers’ Union. The impressions from this trip formed the basis of the book. The author depicts different layers of Peruvian society. Workers and students, figures of art, culture, science, representatives of government circles, leaders of the Peruvian Communist Party – they all pass before the reader’s eyes. The author vividly and impressively describes the morals and customs of the Peruvians – bullfighting, folk games and dances, etc. On many pages, he talks interestingly about the past – about the history of the ancient and powerful state of the Incas with its high culture, about the Spanish conquerors. These historical excursions seem to highlight the current reality of the peoples of Peru.