Paris is beautiful and French culture will always stay with me, but the country is not for me and never was. Sooner or later, I will leave. This is the feeling I had early on in my French life. It took me the eight short stories that make up this book to explain why. They describe my surroundings almost from the moment I was born in the heart of the old city to the moment I left a large and comfortable apartment near the great district of Montparnasse. Why was I always a stranger?