The 121 letters collected in this book document Martinů's life in his own words, beginning as a student in Prague and Paris, following his flight from Nazi-occupied France and charting his triumphs in American exile; the last letter is dated shortly before his death in 1959. They are addressed to his family and friends back home in the village of Polička, on the Czech-Moravian border. Kept at a distance by the Nazi occupation and then by Communism, Martinů was never to return there but, in a letter to the mayor, written as a gesture of solidarity after August 1938, he proudly described himself as a ‘native son who is far from his home but who constantly returns – if only in his thoughts – with gladness – to that dear land – the most beautiful on earth’.