The story of an intelligent man whose last big adventure is very likely to be Death, but death through what we may call “natural causes”, if any cause can be described as natural. He wants to make his death elegant and sensible, fearless and forthright. He wants to make it with his eyes wide open. The man is a writer who is infinitely curious and enjoys all sorts of symmetries. He wants to make his life related to its beginning, which he believes started not where he lives now, which is New York, modern city of priapic towers and hubristic skyscrapers, but where it began with his grandmother in Lucca in Italy, mediaeval town of priapic towers and hubristic phallic skyscrapers. He takes a sabbatical from his life as a writer in New York, an extended holiday in semi-retirement from which he might not return. His family accompanies him on his travels to Lucca, in order to trace his ancestral roots and to clean up the loose ends in his life.