This multi-volume Balkan saga traces the author's family line from the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century to the collapse of Yugoslavia at the close of that century, crossing borders, identities, languages, religions, and genres. The novel explores the nature of boundaries through the metaphor of an eel, a fish that has for centuries crossed human-imposed borders in its migratory journey from its adopted home in the Balkans to its birthplace in the Sargasso Sea.