A French literature professor arrives as a guest lecturer at a fictional American university and quickly becomes friends with a physics professor who has invented a "psychograph"--The titular thought-reading machine. When the machine goes on the public market, "life becomes more complicated and considerably funnier" (Newsweek, New York, May 30, 1938)

The first volume in a series of volumes indebted to Oriental modes of storytelling, such as found in The Thousand and One Nights, Kyra Kyralina is a book of great charm and profound insight into the human condition.