An old American who lives in Brazil is writing his memoirs. An English teacher at the navel academy, he is married to a woman young enough to be his daughter and has a little son whom he loves. He sits in a mountain garden in Niteroi, overlooking the ocean, and carries with him a Walther P-88.

As he reminisces and writes, placing the pages carefully in his antproof case, we learn that he was a World War II ace who was shot down twice; an investment banker who met with popes and presidents; a multimillionaire; and a man who was never not in love. He was the thief of the century, a murderer, and a protector of the innocent. In his adolescence he spent years in an insane asylum in Switzerland.

And all his life, he waged a valiant, losing, one-man battle against the world's most insidious enslaver: coffee. Mark Helprin's astounding prose combines adventure, satire, flights of transcendence, and high comedy with vivid and poignant memories of a Hudson Valley and New York City that no longer exist.