Roman-masquerade, novel-labyrinth, novel-matryoshka; one of the brightest debuts in English literature of recent years. In a dazzling line stretching over three eras, cynical whores and naive debutantes, high-society ladies and victims of financial pyramids, fashionable painters wielding a sword no less skillfully than a brush, and famous castrati, whose favor European rulers are vying with each other, rush before the reader in a fiery dance. ..