内容简介：
Gray Riding lives in a black-and-white world bedeviled by certainty. Punishment follows wrongdoing, subordinates obey authority, death is the consequence of illness. Cordelia Lioht lives a nuanced life. Her mother suffers from a condition that the best doctors in Europe cannot relieve. She writes air-mail letters and delights in the complexity of mazes, maps, and dreams. When Gray meets Cordelia, will the world as they know it change forever? Set in 1931, Riding ventures from the claustrophobic world of a boys' boarding school to the dizzying atmosphere of the Continent between the wars. Cold dormitories, Yorkshire rain, London theater, Parisian salons, German spas, Irish wellsprings, English summers, and the hearts of the people abiding there. A vanished world, restored in vividness. Living as we do, so much better than our grandparents, in our best of all possible worlds, what could we possibly require from theirs, imperfect and closing in on cataclysm?