A young woman is promised to the scion of a noble family. While her betrothed is away traveling, she is sent to the family’s villa to make her marriage preparations. There, the woman discovers that her future in-laws fear the coming of night, each and every night, and seem to never sleep. As the days pass, the atmosphere turns increasingly surreal, and the young bride’s interactions with the family turn increasingly erotic. In this “virtuoso literary performance,” Alessandro Baricco portrays a cast of mysterious characters who exist outside of the normal rules of causation. is an adult fable about fate, otherness, and the author’s own act of creation ( ). “Baricco spins it all together into a work of elegance, eroticism and playful make-believe.”—