Chronicles the history and often unexplored cultural impact of a narcotic whose use has spanned centuries and forms, from smoking dens in the 1800s to the heroin of today.

On his release from a gulag in the Soviet Union, a British businessman becomes a teacher in the village of a fellow prisoner who died. Twenty years later he is discovered by his own--the embassy is sending a car. But are they still his own? For Alexander Bayliss, 80, a dilemma. By the author of Hiroshima Joe.