What do you do when your wife abducts your children?

This was the question facing Douglas Galbraith when, in 2003, he returned home to Scotland from a few days' work in London.

The house was silent, empty and locked; his four and six-year-old sons' pyjamas lay on the bedroom floor. And on the doormat, confirmation from the Post Office of a forwarding address - in Japan. He has not seen them since.

This book goes to the very heart of relations between parents and children, men and women, and between races and nations - to the heart of what it is to be alive.