Adolf Muschg, the most important Swiss writer since Frisch and Dürrenmatt, wrote his way into the highest echelons of literature. He was a professor at ETH and president of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Retracing the path of his novel Heimkehr nach Fukushima (Return to Fukushima), this biographical film travels to the radioactive region, as well as to the Zen monastery where he searched for the 'other' within himself in order to gain a better understanding of otherness. He had a hard start in life, as his father died early and his mother suffered from depression. Half orphaned, he went away to attend boarding school, then studied at the University of Zurich and Cambridge. He later taught in Tokyo, Göttingen, and at Cornell University (USA). He came of age politically in America, influenced by opposition to the Vietnam War and the music of Woodstock during the years of upheaval 1967-1969.