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When heatstroke brings geologist Willy to the brink in the Australian outback and triggers epileptic seizures, he makes the impetuous decision to go to temperate Sweden to recover. Sweden is undergoing a great social experiment, which includes taking in political refugees from a score of conflicts and dictatorships. Willy pinballs through alien landscapes in lyrical cascades, looking for a new self in dorm and woods on a pink girls' bike, humbled by clumsiness in a new language, a bit dazed at the press of Cold War Europe, amused at a trickle of spies and schemers, roused to affection for his language classmates.

When he meets fiercely fay Svea she is as a dream he could not have dared. Her scorn undoes him, but she is also intrigued at his wry haplessness.

"But hear the world singing. It makes me want to say, holy, and to use words like, OK, chryselephantine in a sentence. I am in the company of Paddy bloody Hannan, gold's here men "

"No, but what is happening, merde What has truly happened "