This autobiography in stories takes us through a most remarkable life, from the innocence of prewar Prague through the horrors of the Nazi occupation and World War II. In the title story, narrated by Skvorecky’, s alter-ego Danny Smiricky, seven-year-old Danny falls in love for the first time, at sixteen he hides in a railway station and watches as his Jewish teacher is herded onto a train and taken away, and in 1968, as Russian tanks rolled into Prague, vSkvoreck´, y flees Czechoslovakia, taking Danny with him. In the collection’, s final stories, Danny begins his tenure as Professor Smiricky at a Canadian university and attempts to come to terms with the politically innocent and self-centered youth that flock to his courses.