By a master of European literature, a sensual, absorting tale of the human capacity for enduring love, selfish passion and cowardly betrayal. In a hamlet amid the austere beauty of northern Russia lives the woman who waited, still expecting her lover to return from the Second World War after thirty years. A young, rebellious writer from Leningrad, fascinated by her fruitless fidelity, seeks to unravel her secrets - but the closer he comes to her, the more she surprises him.