This book, Savinio's most famous and for many his masterpiece, was first published in 1942 and yet its essence remains unchanged despite the years. The Italian artist intends to resurrect the extinct art of a great painter like Holbein, whose greatness consists in capturing the impure matter of which the life and essence of the personage portrayed is made in such a vivid way that it will last forever. Contad, men, your story is the personal gallery of portraits with which Savinio wants to immortalize, using prose, a series of characters - from Isadora Duncan or the bullfighter Antonio Bienvenida, to Nostradamus or Jules Verne-to those who breathe life his imaginative, genuinely penetrating, pious and ruthless look at a time.