The essence of desire

She is a successful writer with a recent traumatic experience, he is a charismatic lawyer and world traveler. Both are in their prime and both come from Chile. Soon after their meeting in London, they are consumed by mutual passion and heat, heralding a stormy long-distance love affair. The longed-for meetings of the two lovers, in addition to unbridled sex and erotic experiments, are also filled with conversations about literature and sharing of the deepest secrets, while inventive love games constantly break down and push their inner boundaries. However, the initial pleasant haze gradually disappears and in its place, other companions of love appear with increasing intensity – jealousy, possessiveness, lies and distrust. The lovers' last desperate attempt to leave the vicious circle and find a new path comes to a shocking end.

Just as the human mind is reluctant to accept that which defies rational explanation, the main character, in her fragmentary narrative, recapitulates this part of her life objectively and without unnecessary embellishment, trying to understand and come to reconciliation. Meeting after meeting, city after city, we follow the development of the relationship between two cosmopolitan personalities, their boundless passion and dark obsession, evoking Bertolucci' s iconic film Last Tango in Paris.

It is published in the translation by Jitka Schmidtová.