A novel in the form of twenty edited letters written from a hotel room in Venice. The letters are written to a friend at home by an Australian man recently diagnosed with an incurable disease. The writer describes a journey from Switzerland to Venice and reflects on questions of morality, seduction and the search for paradise. He interweaves incidents from a journey with stories of passion and enchantment set in a variety of lands and centuries. The author is an essayist, translator and political commentator and has written 'A Mother's Disgrace', an autobiographical account of his life as an adopted child.