The story brings together  the author’s works first published in the eponymous 1963 collection. Why the title Unfinished Portraits? The author himself offers the explanation:
“...The true biography of a person resembles an unfinished building: it can never be completed. You look at this half-built structure, and your heart responds with the colors of life, which has no end and no roof. Genuine people never reach the roof, for their roof is the sky itself—unattainable. True people continue to ascend, and when they are no longer here, others follow after them, carrying the ascent onward...”