"In the beginning, the beginning of your story, this story that isn't yours, there was a single article…."

 

These are the opening words: the location is Manhattan, the protagonist is Richard Schwan, journalist for the New York Times. There follows a newsroom, an airplane, more airplanes, an ocean, two oceans, then after New York there is Los Angeles, Istanbul, Baghdad, Rome and then the return to New York via Bamberg (Baveria), everything to cross over, suffer, enjoy, to be lived. And in this living there is a war, one of those wars that continues but is never declared, that springs up just like that, as if by accident. And Richard Schwan will be there, with his ideals of truth and freedom. And the research for truth and freedom will also be the search for life, the search for life will be a search for the self, for the soul. And so, with a soul laid bare, he will go out into the world. Beyond the peculiarities of contingency, including the elements of time and space, this novel pushes the reader to look beyond, pass over from non-being into being.