Draws on the Sephardic diaspora, the Holocaust, and Stalin's purges to follow the experiences of people both real and imagined who come together in an allusive pattern.

Emulating the classical inspirations of De Quincey, Baudelaire, Poe, Joyce, Walter Benjamin, Melville, Lorca and Whitman, the author follows their journeys as well as tells their stories, in this book that is part memoir, part novel, part chronicle of urban wandering.