Romain Gary tells the story of his childhood and youth with his mother, a Russian former actress carried by a love and unconditional faith in her son.

The first part begins with the reveries of a mature Romain, remembering how, out of love for his mother, he had decided to stand against the stupidity and meanness of the world.

During a brief period of prosperity, due to the success of a "Parisian haute couture" shop energetically run by his mother, he leads an extravagant lifestyle with a whole host of tutors.

He tells how he later become what his mother had predicted — a famous writer, a war hero  while relating the penniless period that followed their arrival in Wilno.

And yet, Romain is plagued by the worry that he will not succeed in time to offer his victory to his mother, when he learns that she has diabetes, a fact she had been hiding from him for two years.

Having joined the Free French Air Forces, he fights in Great Britain and Africa and ends the war with the rank of captain.

Returning to Nice at the end of the war, he discovers that his mother has died three and a half years earlier, having given a friend the task of sending her son hundreds of letters that she had written for him in the days preceding her death.