Book description
Axel Vander, distinguished intellectual and elderly academic, is not
the man he seems. When a letter arrives out of the blue, threatening to
unveil his secrets - and carefully concealed identity - Vander travels
to Turin to meet its author. There, muddled by age and alcohol, unable
always to distinguish fact from fiction, Vander comes face to face with
the woman who has the knowledge to unmask him, Cass Cleave. However, her
sense of reality is as unreliable as his, and the two are quickly drawn
together, their relationship dark, disturbed and doomed to disaster from
its very start. 'In beautiful, lucid prose John Banville describes a
tragedy so strongly rooted in history and character that, like all real
tragedies, it could not happen otherwise' The Times
