Love as violence, love as a curse, love as redemption, as suffering, as wisdom, as innocence, as delusion - each story takes place on the night of 19 March 1929 and a character tries to understand or express love from his or her perspective: as dancer, lawyer, astronomer, mathematician, artist, actor, doctor, mirror-maker. This book, inhabited by real and imagined characters at the mid point between the two world wars, was an early landmark in a career that includes the controversial novel Borderliners and perhaps the most attractive thriller of the decade, Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow.