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