From the award-winning Brazilian author of Nine Nights comes a twisting psychological novel of literary intrigue, sexual desire, and murder.
In the pitch-black cell of an asylum-possibly in nineteenth-century France-a "baron" carries on an extended dialogue with a disembodied "voice." Arrested for a crime that he has no memory of, the baron swears to his innocence throughout.
In contemporary France, a husband and wife push each other into increasingly violent and extreme situations in what is evidently a deeply twisted marriage. There is only one possible outcome as the stakes continue to escalate. And where there is murder, there must be a murderer. But as Bernardo Carvalho's ingeniously structured novel explores man's capacity to deceive and damage, nothing is quite as it first appears.
"Carvalho's is a bold talent."- Scotland on Sunday

Leonardo Padura Fuentes is one of Cuba's most acclaimed writers. He was born in 1955, not far from Hemingway's Cuban home and has written extensively as a critic and essayist, as well as novelist. A winner of the international Dashiell Hammett prize, his books include a series of detective novels featuring Mario Conde.