What came before the Big Bang, and what exists outside of the universe it created? Until recently, scientists could only guess at what lay past the edge of spacetime. But as pioneering theoretical physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton explains, new scientific tools are giving us the ability to peer beyond the limits of our universe and to test our theories about what is there. Her research suggests that we sit in a quantum landscape whose peaks and valleys hide a multitude of other universes, and whose nature holds the secret to the origins of life itself. In this book she interweaves the story of how she arrived at her breakthrough vision with that of her journey from communist Albania, where she was born and brought up, to the West, showing how her unconventional path helped her to challenge orthodoxies and become one of the most courageous thinkers on the world stage of theoretical physics.