Born in Holland, half Jewish, raised in Amsterdam, Brussels, Genoa, Philadelphia - Lionni is a man of many languages and cultures but no real home. His story is one of a constant search, a search that takes him from an ideal early childhood to a strict education in Italy that proved largely irrelevant to his future, and then to exile from Fascist Italy in America; from being a highly political aspiring artist to becoming a highly successful advertising director (he invented the famous "Never underestimate the power of a woman" campaign) and a powerful force in the world of graphics as the art director of Fortune magazine; from life in the affluent commuter world of Connecticut to a return to Italy and the life of an artist. After all this - a full life by any account - he finds yet another successful vocation as the author and illustrator of children's books that have sold millions of copies throughout the world.

Delilah, an aspiring artist and nude model, starts to question her life and father, who has begun to show signs of Alzheimer's disease, after her mother suddenly returns with a young daughter and reveals a shocking family secret.

As the result of a series of fortuitous encounters and circumstances, the Italian writer Giacomo Longhi falls victim to an obsessive curiosity about the famous English artist Julian Sax. He would like to meet Sax, but the great painter is surrounded by an almost impenetrable protective screen. The writer’s wife, the charming and sensuous Rossa, eventually takes him to a tea room in London, where Sax spends a few hours of each day accompanied by his children, models and friends. The narrator begins to fear that his wife Rossa might succumb to the charms of this seductive man, who attracts women, paints them and then discards them. In an unpredictable sequence of events, Elkann weaves a fascinating web that blends reality and fiction, and draws the reader into the lives of characters who will prove hard to forget.

Es ist ein beeindruckend-berührender Rückblick in die dunkelste deutsche Geschichte am Beispiel einer Einzelbiographie [kult]