An opulent, romantic novel, written in the grand manner, set at the height of Europe's belle époque, about a handsome young man in his mid-20s --- a golden boy who secures a position as a tutor in the household of one of the most prominent bourgeois families in Amsterdam --- and his entry into a world of moneyed glamour and dangerous temptations.

Piet Barol, blue-eyed, dark-haired, seductive, and seductively charged, enters this magnificent world and inexorably learns the hidden truths of this vastly rich, secretive family and, through the course of the novel, is profoundly transformed as his charm and sexual pull transform each of their lives. In the heady exhilaration of this new world, amid delights and temptations that Piet has only dreamed of, he discovers that some of the intimacies he has cultivated are dangerous liaisons indeed…. By the author of The Drowning People (“A literary sensation” ---The New York Times Book Review) and Natural Elements (“A magnum opus” ---The New Yorker).