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A travel book to Japan that collects the impressions of the Dutch author in his forty years visiting its landscapes, its architecture, its poetry and its history. Certain trips have the secret objective of "moving you away from your origins", of "disrupting your existence": "Only then have you really left, so much so that you become someone else", says Nooteboom, tireless explorer of culture. Infinite Circles collects an illuminating testimony about the country that causes him a unique fascination: Japan. From the futuristic metropolises of Tokyo and Osaka to the ancient imperial cities of Kyoto and Nara, from the prints of Hokusai and Hiroshige, or the fascinating Chojo Jinbutsu Giga scrolls, to the kabuki theater; from the mystical and intellectual rapture of Zen gardens to the intertwined coexistence of Buddhism and Shintoism in temples with ancient rites that still mark the agricultural calendar. Travels accompanied by the pages of Kawabata, Mishima, Tanizaki, but above all by Shõnagon's Pillow Book and The Story of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu, the first novel in history, which portrays the extreme refinement reached by the isolated Heian court in the 11th century. With his ability to capture the finer details, draw connections, encourage us to see with new eyes, and bring the particular to the universal, Nooteboom plunges into the experience of discovery, beauty, and challenge that Japan continues to be for the West.