"I have invented nothing, composed nothing. It is no longer about 'poetry.' The most important thing is what has been observed." With these words, Joseph Roth opens his account of the odyssey of Franz Tunda, an Austrian officer in World War I who escapes from Russian captivity. On his adventurous journey, he becomes entangled in the chaos of the Russian Civil War, the communist avant-garde, and the arms of a beautiful Georgian woman. Yet Tunda never truly arrives anywhere. Baku, Moscow, Vienna, Paris - each place turns out to be just another stage in his flight.