"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.