Step One: Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer, in which American boy travels to Eastern Europe to learn family history and resolve outstanding issues.

Step Two: Nowhere Man, by Aleksander Hemon, in which Eastern European boy travels to US to broaden horizons and is more or less caught in Chicago when Bosnia/Herzogovinian war breaks out.

Step Three: Oxygen, by Andrew Miller, in which two men attend their dying mother; one of the men is translating a play by an Eastern European playwright, writing in French and living in France. Separately, the playwright travels to Eastern Europe to provide underground support and to resolve emotional issues outstanding since the '56 uprising.

Step Four: Prague, by Arthur Phillips, in which five American kids live, love and laugh in Budapest shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall.