Jezow, the ancestral estate of the Kornowski family, is bankrupt. The old count has gone mad; his wife is an invalid, his son Stefan is still a school-boy. Krystina Kornowski, the count's daughter, believes that the bank's representative will postpone foreclosure if she sleeps with him. She is double-crossed. The estate is sold and the family are evicted from their family home.
Stefan and Kyrstina move to live with an aunt in Warsaw. Radicalised by their sudden destitution, they join the Communist party and Krystina marries a party activist Bruno, by whom she has a son, Teofil. Stefan abandons his study of law and becomes a writer. His avante-garde work is a critical success. He leaves the party, is taken up by the rich Princess Czarniecki and given a room to write in in the Czarnieki palace. There Stefan plans the sadistic seduction of the Czarnieki's daughter Tilly but, before his plan can be put into effect, he accepts the offer of a promotional free passage on a liner sailing to New York. As the boat reaches its destination, the passengers and crew hear the news that Germany has invaded Poland. All demand to return to Poland to fight in the war. Stefan disembarks and stays in America.
Almost twenty years later, Annabel Colte, the daughter of an English peer, goes to Paris to learn French. She is a paying guest in the flat of Krystina Kornowski, now Madame de Pincey. Annabel meets her landlady's brother Stefan, recently returned from New York, and her son Teofil with whom she falls in love. The Kornovskis are invited to stay with Annabel's parents in their large country house in North Cornwall where the innocent love of the young couple is threatened by a predatory roué.
'A marvellous, absorbing book. You'll be the richer for having read it.'
New York Times Book Review

'An experience: it gradually draws you into its complex web, persuades you to identify with its leading characters and leaves you much wiser about a country and its people... a considerable achievement.'
Martin Goff, Daily Telegraph
If Dostoyevsky were reincarnated as an Englishman, he might write novels like Piers Paul Read'.
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