The subtitle of this book ‘The Asian and North American Experience’ gives an indication of its contents. It is about Asians living in North America and their experience of the new culture to which they have migrated as well as their experience of psychoanalysis. The book is also about the analysts' experience of working with Asians including Indians, Japanese and Chinese (with a short appendix on Koreans), and the issues that are raised in these analyses.

Roland conveys at the beginning of the book a sense of the difficulties in writing on this topic. When writing his first book on a related subject, there seemed to be anxieties that the ideas might fall on deaf ears. He was encouraged by a remark made by the poet and linguist Ramanujan ‘When you have important ideas, even if only a few people will read it, it will be worthwhile, the ideas will spread’ (p. ix). Fortunately, he wrote not only the first book, but this one as well.