Shura Bordorin

Shura Bordorin is the main character of the book and narrates roughly half of the text. Shura is born in 1925 in Berkeley, California, to a Russian immigrant father and a mother from Illinois, both of whom are teachers. Shura is a precocious child who graduates from high school early and earns a scholarship to Harvard. However, Shura quickly drops out of Harvard and signs up for the navy during World War II. It is in the navy that Shura learns the power of drugs when he develops an infection in his thumb and is given morphine to treat it. After the navy, Shura returns to school at the University of California Berkeley and receives his PhD in biochemistry. With this degree, Shura gets a job with Dole Chemical Company where he manufactures psychedelic drugs. Shura leaves this job in the mid 1960s to produce his drugs in...