'Look at the harlequins ...Play! Invent the world! Invent reality'. This is the
childhood advice given by an aunt to Russian born writer Vadim Vadimovich, who e
migrates to England, then Paris, then Germany and then the US, and, now dying, r
econstructs his past. He remembers Iris his first wife, Annette his long-necked
typist and Bel his daughter, as well as his own bizarre 'numerical nimbus syndro
me'.
