I was born in Budapest on January 30, 1940, on a terrible north-wind-whipped morning. My mother, Masika, then only twenty-five years old, had great trouble delivering me, so I was born by cesarean section. Mother was a famous sculptor who also happened to be a psychic, medium, and palm reader. She came from a long line of witches in the herbalist tradition. Her sister continued the line, becoming a pharmacist.The Hungarian revolution in 1956 changed my life. I escaped to the West and went to school in Innsbruck and Vienna, and later at the University of Chicago, studying languages. I married a...