A man washes up more dead than alive on the shores of a sun-dazzled Aegean Isle. His memory has been wiped absolutely clean. Who is he? Where is he from? A battered man with no past, a survivor. In a heavenly awakening he meets the lovely and beguiling Nefise, and instantly falls hopelessly in love. Through a series of idyllic and tumultuous encounters on the shores of this Turkish island the two grope towards the threshold of a new life together... until suddenly one bright morning hell opens up beneath them. Meet Yousef Al-Khaled, a lover, a man of profound tenderness, sensitivity and passion ... and the world's most wanted terrorist. In a kaleidoscopic odyssey through the darkest moments of our era, from bomb-smashed caves in the Afghan mountains to the hot streets of Jeddah, from London's glitter to the sorrows of New York, from frenzied Balkan escapes to the wild labyrinth of Istanbul's Grand Bazaar and a desperate standoff beneath the murky waters of the Bosporus, Yousef races unstoppably towards his fate - until it seizes him once and for all. A historical romance entwined in a spiritual journey, thriller, and all-encompassing love story, this is the tragic tale of a great sinner, "the happiest man in the world," in a pilgrimage beyond fundamentalist violence and hatred to discover another Islam, the Islam we seldom if ever hear about.