By the author of two 20th Century classics of Italian prose, this short novel is set in 1922 (when the Fascists seized power in Italy) and weaves together the lives of an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and a salesman who collects antique tomes of philosophy. There are many digressions on the way - a lover lost in the First World War, the Madonna's rescue of a doctor from witches, Mr Digbens of Colchester and his philosophical correspondents - so as to arrive at a series of crafted coincidences and a twist of humour in the melodramatic denouement.