Book excerpt: This memoir is the account of the life of the author’s spanning seven decades lived on three continents: The Middle East, Europe and the United States. What sets this memoir apart from so many others is the breadth of its cultural dimensions and the depth of its psychological insights. Many memoirs are written by celebrities or those by pervasive traumas in their lives have a voyeuristic quality. However, there is very little in these lives with which people can identify. The author’s memoir is highly distinctive, but the issues he focuses on have many features that are common with other people’s lives, such as the role of chance and the reconstruction of past events in the light of the present. These issues are presented in a way that readers can learn and benefit from it. This book is the account of a fascinating life that is not only interesting to read but instructive by placing the various stages and facets of life in their historical and cultural contexts such as the history and culture of the Middle East, which are important but not well known.