For the ladies of the poetry circle, Mieko Togano is a wise mentor, for critics she is the publisher of a literary magazine and a talented poetess, for everyone around her she is a strong personality, a charming woman who has retained her refined beauty at the age of fifty. And for her daughter-in-law, she is the focus of a mysterious force that influences people’s actions. A young widow is possessed by the spirit of her mother-in-law; it seems to her that Mieko has started a terrible game in which, besides both of them, two men are involved... The novel by the famous Japanese writer Fumiko Enchi (1905–1986) is being published in Russia for the first time.