The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller, available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. ''Wonderful. Immensely moving'' Daily TelegraphAs darkness settles on a forgotten castle at the foot of the Carpathian mountains, two men sit down to a final meal together. They have not seen one another in forty-one years. At their last meeting, in the company of a beautiful woman, an unspoken act of betrayal left all three lives shattered - and each of them alone. Tonight, as wine stirs the blood, it is time to talk of old passions and that last, fateful meeting. ''Extraordinary. Elegiac, sombre, musical and gripping. An immensely wise book'' Observer''A masterpiece. Works beautifully as a novel of suspense ... whose denouement is as exciting as a detective tale. It is a thrill to read something so startlingly original'' Evening Standard''Utterly compelling. An extraordinary and beautiful novel'' Scotsman ''One of those novels which stays in the memory long after it has been put down. A masterpiece'' Sunday Telegraph