It is the autobiography of Giorgio Bassani, told in a time span of around 15 years, a time where the ambiguous and mysterious female figure of Micol was a central part of his life....

A young working class woman abandoned by her bourgeois lover, the tensions of intermarriage between established classes and communities, a holocaust survivor seemingly back from the dead, a formidable socialist activist defying house arrest, and the only witness to the first local atrocity of the Second World War....