Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana

Who is this man, Ilya? He doesn't know where he came from, or how old he is. He seems to know things he couldn't possibly have learned. He has skills he couldn't possibly have acquired. He is sought out, and sometimes captured, by political and religious leaders, and constantly followed by anonymous stalkers.

At first, he doesn't even know that he is Ilya. He wakes up one evening in a train station, unable to remember anything about himself, including his own name. As he searches for someone – anyone – who might know who he is, he encounters Katerinya, a young writer, who takes an interest in his predicament and offers to help. She takes him in, and although strangers, they discover that they have a natural affinity that blurs the line between friendship and attraction.

This turns out to be good memory therapy for Ilya, and he soon recovers his knowledge of the last 20 years or so – but then it becomes stuck. He can't remember anything prior to that. And it soon becomes clear to them that Ilya's past self has left messages for his present self – there is something about the past that his present self needs to know – but the clues are cryptic and hard to decipher.

Thus begins the story of Ilya and Katerinya, a lifelong search for the meaning of something from his past. It is a strange sort of love story where they anchor their relationship on who they are in the present, as if there had been no past. It's easier that way. But Katerinya is conflicted. There must have been prior women in Ilya's past, and if so, where are they now? What did they mean to him? Might they come back to find him?

And it's not just Ilya who can't remember the past. Set in a surprising place, and a surprising time, it seems that everyone is unclear about what happened in the deep past. Is this perhaps what past-Ilya has been trying to tell present-Ilya?

Over the course of a 24 year love affair, buffeted by political and religious intrigue, two epidemics, and a civil war, Ilya and Katerinya finally figure out who he really is ... or was. But it's not what either had expected.