CON BRIO

In a brasserie off the Boulevard St-Germain, a renowned novelist watches,entranced, the motions of a young woman's hands folding a restaurant billinto a paper boat. This passing observation - slim fingers against a whitelinen tablecloth - provides the springboard for this story of love andjealousy. The novelist's orderly life vanishes the instant he admires thisstrange woman's hands; the discipline of forty fruitful years dissolves. Onan impulse, he proposes. She answers without hesitation - yes, she willmarry him, but only on her terms. She will occupy his house, but not hisbed. When she moves in, Kati upends her new husband's meticulous domesticarrangements, then his sanity. Her stubborn detachment transforms thewriter from a cool, amused observer of life into a creature ravaged bydoubt, passion and jealousy. With a brutality counterpointed by theelegance and subtlety of Savit's prose, this story dramatises the ruinousconsequences of sexual obsession.