"How shall I describe my book? Perhaps as a profoundly European experience, told to friends in a happy after-dinner frame of mind. To which I might add that it covers life in five countries, and its spectrum ranges from pimps and Nazi bullies to Nobel laureates, from life behind barbed wire to triumphs of personal freedom, and from the plainly frivolous to the philosophies of mind, beauty and religion. " Signed by Sommerhoff on the front end-paper.