Cesare is a seventy-seven-year-old widower and cynical troublemaker, a man who has always struggled to care for others and has given up trying. Aside from an intermittent fling with a mature nurse called Rossana, who moonlights as a sex worker, he prefers to live his own life, avoiding contact with his neighbours and even his own children wherever possible. Until one day, the enigmatic Emma moves into the neighbouring flat.

Emma is married to a strange and sinister man. A man that seems so different from Emma. As Cesare investigates, and starts to uncover the truth of their relationship, he begins to rediscover an appetite for life, and soon he finds himself risking everything for a future he had never thought possible.

Translated by: Shaun Whiteside