Amsterdam, 1667. Pieter Blaeu, a young publisher, meets the aged, destitute painter Rembrandt van Rijn, and is powerfully drawn into his orbit. Together with a poet named Clara he begins a pursuit of the elusive man's confidence, in a quest that is at once a love affair and a layered, luminous portrait of a most mysterious artist and his world.

`Here are the sights, smells, sounds and colours of the Dutch golden age alchemised into fictional gold . . . The marriage of art, history and fiction has rarely been so alive. A cause for celebration' The Times

`It is no mean feat for a young writer to pitch herself against the great master and attempt to achieve in prose the explorations of identity that Rembrandt achieved in paint . . . Van Rijn returns us to [the paintings] with a renewed sense of wonder' TLS

'An enticing journey into the past, well observed and researched, and providing a tour of the alternative artistic life of the seventeenth century' Sunday Times