Alternating between autobiographical fact and fiction, Cryptomnesia narrates the author’s childhood memories of his asylum-odyssey from Iran to France, Austria, Belgium, and finally the Federal Republic of Germany, through a proxy character named Reinoldus. Reinoldus’s experiences in the industrial city of Dortmund—at a club, in the central train station, hanging out with friends at the lake—are match cut with flashbacks. The narrator’s relationship to Reinoldus and the memories fluctuates constantly, on the verge of collapse: who is telling whose story?