First Paragraph

Was there something special about my father? Not really. True, he was born in Switzerland, in Basel, and there weren't too many Swiss-born people in our little town. As a matter of fact, he was the only one. Otherwise, he was just an ordinary bootmaker, and not even a very good one. His father, my grandfather, was a professor of medicine in Basel, and his brothers were all doctors. My father was supposed to have become a doctor, too, but he became a bootmaker instead.

- From Heavy Sand by Anatoli Rybakov