When Sotirios Majoros's thirteen-year-old daughter asked him a seemingly simple question, "What is life?", little did she realize the explosion of thoughts and ideas that she would set off in her father's mind. To answer her question, Sotirios found himself looking back through time to the father of history, Herodotus, and across humanity's numerous cultures, focusing in particular on how this question is expressed through various pieces of artwork, such as sculptures and paintings. He also looked back through his own life, eventually realizing that lurking beneath his daughter's question was an even more fundamental question: Who am I? His attempt to answer this question forms the foundation of this book.
