The novel moves between three worlds: the Montafon valley and the Alps where Herbert Willi
lives and listens, the cities of Europe where his music travels, and the Korean mountains
and temples that Author Jeong calls home. Every place below appears in the book; the chapter
links lead to where it does.
The Montafon and the Austrian Alps
The heart of the novel: a remote valley in Vorarlberg, "as much as six hundred kilometers west of Austria's capital."
Across Europe
Vienna and the Danube, Salzburg, the cities of the Rhee-Francesca story, and the long Italian journey of the middle chapters.
Austria and Central Europe
Italy
Korea
Author Jeong's world: a hermitage above a thousand-year-old temple, the teachers' temples, and the places where the Austrian and Korean threads meet.
Mentioned in passing
The novel also reaches, in memory or conversation, to Tokyo and the New Japan Philharmonic,
Carnegie Hall and the Montclair Hotel in New York, London's Royal Albert Hall, Dr. Rhee's
exile in Hawaii, the Stuttgart stadium of the 1988 semifinal, Lucerne, Milan, Goethe's road
through Frankfurt, Weimar, and Karlsbad, Napoleon's Corsica, Waterloo, and Saint Helena, the
Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya, the unnamed Tuscan villa where Willi lived four years in silence,
and, in Korea, ancient Gyeongju, Boseong's Yulpo Beach, and the Jeokbyeok cliffs of Hwasun.