When 14-year-old Robert blinks, he is pulled into the place and time of whatever he happens to be looking at. A television documentary leaves him shivering in Siberia in 1956, a movie drops him into the opal mines of post-war Australia, a photo on a mantle zips him off to impoverished Weimar Germany. And that`s only the beginning. Hans Mangus Enzensberger takes us through seven counties and historical time periods, recreating in each place the mood and temper of the time. But how can Robert return to his own home and kitchen? Landing in seventeeth-century Holland as apprentice to a great painter, Robert comes upon a solution--but only if he can recall the future, perfectly.