After the award-winning "City of the Absent," Alexandros Massavetas leaves Constantinople for a series of journeys through the history and present of Asia Minor. This book covers the southern coast of the Propontis and the Aegean shores, forming the first volume of a trilogy that will extend throughout the memory-laden Asia Minor.

The author begins his wanderings in Bithynia and Mysia, focusing on the memories and traces of Roman Greece, reviving the lost ethnic mosaic of the region. He continues in Aeolis, focusing on Ayvalik and Pergamon. In the concrete Smyrna, he documents the living history through the testimonies of the last Levantines and Jews of the city, as well as the final elderly voices of the Smyrniot dialect. Descending the Aegean shores, Massavetas traverses Ionia, ending up at the ruined monasteries of Lake Bafa and Latmus, the granite mountain with its otherworldly landscapes.

The overview of the area provides an opportunity for an excavation of the memory of more cultures and eras, in places where the past often weighs heavily and suffocatingly. Here, history resembles an unreadable palimpsest, where each conqueror attempted to bury the memory of their predecessors by imposing their own narrative.

The re-examination of history is enriched by the personal memories of the author's fellow travelers, such as Akilas Millas and Kostas Stamatopoulos, as well as the stories of the many people they meet along the way. From the pages of the book emanate the last rays of a world threatened by oblivion and—even more so—the monstrous advance of concrete.