The book is a travelogue based on a journey, apparently not promising
great adventures, gradually taking the author to a complete change of
life style and to the realization that history is not exactly as told in
the West. The quite unexpected love story merges or fades into the
author's intellectual adventure and to a world whose gate is Greece and
its far fetching cultural influence over Asia. If the epilogue of the
story sees Persia or Iran victorious over Greece, it is Greece that lies
to foundations upon which Asia will build the structure of the modern
West. In a Nutshell the West is the offspring of Asia as fertilized by
Hellenism. The main character, a Florentine who becoming fluent in
English, begins a career in the London's publishing world of early
1970s. Having ambitions to become a historian and an archaeologist he
goes to Greece for a job, intending also to get an insight into
Classical and modern Greece. Surprisingly he encounters some of the
minor figures of the world of kingmakers and the designers of the
borders of the post-colonial Near East. Taking part in an exploration of
the Silk Road gives him a chance to fathom the far reaching roots of
Western civilization
