An imaginary friend waits a long time to be imagined by a child and given a special name, and finally does the unimaginable--he sets out on a quest to find his perfect match in the real world.
Tomas, a hopeless philanderer and successful surgeon, flees Prague when the Russians invade in 1968 and heads for Switzerland where he must provide for himself and his lover by working as a window washer.
"An enchanting new novel from one of the most distinguished writers of our time, an altogether serious comedy that is the synthesis and culmination of his oeuvre"--