A carefully plotted novel in the burlesque manner, in the literary tradition of Sterne's 'Tristram Shandy'.
Javier Marias's prize-winning novel describes the birth and death of a passion. The narrator, a tenor known as "the Lion of Naples", recalls a moment of his life when, during a series of performances of Verdi's 'Othello' in Madrid, he first encountered Manur, a Flemish banker, a man who he had noticed in a train, who was accompanied by his wife, Natalia, and his secretary, Dato. The emotional ties that link this little group, into the which the narrator proceeds to insinuate himself, form the background to this highly sophisticated, sometimes perverse, comedy of manners.
