Set in the 15th century just after the Hundred Years' War, this historical novel of ideas traces the intersecting lives of a Turkish adventurer, an idealistic Lombard revolutionary, an intellectual heretic from Bohemia, and a woman disappointed in love and with her limited options. Agnese chooses to spend 47 years in a cell , looking out on the bustling public life of the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents, where she seeks to confront the oppressions of an age marked by war, famine, disease, and brutal injustice—an age much like our own.

Toni Maraini is an Italian poet, novelist, and art critic. She grew up in an literary family in Sicily, and has lived in Paris, London, Casablanca, and New York.