A sweeping historical tale of Austro-Hungarian soldier Moritz's escape from a Siberian POW camp in 1918 and his three-year walk across the Russian steppes through war and revolution to find his childhood sweetheart waiting for him in his village. On his walk he befriends a revolutionary, but they are accosted by Cossacks and forced to fight to death. Later he adopts the Communist creed and goes to Moscow for revolutionary training and is accompanied by an Austrian count pretending to be communist. In a drunken moment, his disguise slips and Moritz's new friend is shot dead. Interleaved in Moritz's adventure is the contemporary story of Leo, whose girlfriend, Eleni, dies in a bus crash while they are backpacking in South America leaving Leo in pieces. Until he meets Roberto, a physicist, who teaches him to see the universe as a whole. As therapy, he advises him to compile a notebook of the workings of love in the natural world. The two stories conjoin in a very unexpected way.

As the identity of Moritz is sprung on him, Leo's journey through the merciless workings of Fate towards self-discovery is almost complete. Reminiscent of Sebastian Faulks at the height of his powers, this highly charged novel shows how love always has and always will conquer all.