‘Do you have to stare like that?’ I asked. ‘Think about the actors in porn. They’ve got no problem showing themselves off.’ ‘Think about when I broke your nose,’I replied. Ellinor is thirty-six. She wears soft black sweatpants and a Michelin Man jacket. She fights. She tries her hand at online dating, only to find herself stranded by a snowstorm in Stockholm and at the heart of a literary intrigue. Cut to Max Lamas, author, who dreams of a polyglot lover, a woman who will understand him – in every tongue. His search takes him to Italy, where he befriends a marchesa on the brink of ruin, and where her granddaughter, Lucrezia, brings this tale to its final, shocking conclusion.