Before Ulrich lost his sight, he read a magazine story about parrots. A group of explorers had come upon a community of parrots speaking the language of a society wiped out in a recent catastrophe. Astonished by this discovery, the explorers put the parrots in cages and sent them home so that linguists could record what remained of the lost language. But the parrots, already traumatized by the devastation they had recently witnessed, died on the way. Now one hundred years of age, Ulrich wonders if he, unlike these hapless birds, has any wisdom left to leave the world. He embarks on an epic armchair journey of remembrance and imagination―through the turbulent century that marked his country, Bulgaria, and through his own lifetime of lost love and thwarted ambitions.