As a young Lebanese man lies dying in a makeshift mortuary in Beirut during the last days of the civil war in 1991, thoughts of his past life flood through his mind. In his disordered imagination, he writes to the Japanese novelist Yasunari Kawabata who had killed himself in 1972, and argues with him about dying, free will and the value of memory which is for him 'a support untouched by doubt'.<BR>Reaching back to his childhood in the mountains of Northern Lebanon, he recalls the time when Gagarin first orbited the earth and he had to insist to his mother that the world was round, not flat. His move to university in Beirut, the death of his father and his entanglement in the violent politics of the 1970s lead to fierce commitment and an eventual loss of faith.