Set in the period between the Nazi invasion of Poland and the Allied landing in Normandy, in this novel Durrell proposes an amazing narrative adventure that leads us to rediscover the group of young people who spent a momentous summer in the castle of Verfeuille de Monsieur, in Avignon, starring Monsieur or The Prince of Darkness and Livia or buried alive. While Constance is working for the Red Cross as a psychiatrist in Geneva, her husband Sam in the desert in Egypt and her sister Livia works for the Nazis, the encounter with the Egyptian Affad will lead to Constance launching into an absorbing relationship in the that eroticism and philosophy find a strange meeting point.