Adam Nicolson travels along the eastern Mediterranean, from the Ionian Sea to the western coast of Turkey to trace the origins of the poems at the root of modern European thought. Adam travels to Homer's Troy, walking the plains and visiting the ruins of its citadel, finding that although Homer is thought to have been blind, it is possible to directly map Homer's great poem of war onto the coastline of the Aegean, the beach of the Greek camp, the Scamander River and the hewn stone walls of Troy.