Swimming Across recounts Andrew Grove’s childhood and youth in Hungary before he emigrated to the United States. Born András Gróf into a Jewish family in Budapest, Grove describes growing up during the Second World War, surviving the Nazi occupation and experiencing the political upheaval that followed. The memoir focuses closely on family life, school, friendships and his developing interest in science, placing these experiences within Hungary’s changing political conditions.

After the war, Grove lived under an increasingly restrictive Communist government and began studying chemistry at the University of Budapest. The Hungarian uprising of 1956 and its suppression by Soviet forces prompted him to leave the country. He escaped across the Hungarian border, eventually reaching the United States and beginning a new life there. Rather than concentrating on his later career at Intel, the memoir examines the formative experiences of displacement, political instability, education and adaptation that preceded it.