This book is an exploration of the nature of memory and how it links us with people from different places and distant times. It ranges from Roger's upbringing in a Jewish household in Los Angeles to his first trip abroad, in 1964, to the Soviet Union; from his days at Harvard Graduate School studying Russian to his stay in Warsaw, a stay that was truncated by a spy scandal that rocked the United States; from his arrival in Kyoto in 1967 to his years in Australia, where, in 1976, he gave up his American citizenship for an Australian one.