In the years 1934/35, Annemarie Schwarzenbach traveled to the Near East several times, where she worked for a time on excavations in Syria and Persia. She wrote more than a dozen stories about her experiences in the Orient. Many of these tales describe the fates of Europeans and Americans who left their homeland out of a desire for adventure or for political and social reasons. However, in the Orient, she does not find a fairy-tale world; the shadow of the Nazis extends even there, and the social problems are glaringly evident.