Synopsis

Is it possible for a young woman to become the heir to an all-male history and family? Yes, if one is "inclined to love" and if one possesses the art of storytelling, the art of captivating with words. Words that capture a century, the twentieth century, in its transformations, its euphorias, and its tragedies. We begin with Milovan, Arianna's grandfather, who, at the end of the nineteenth century, along with five other companions, leaves a small, remote village in Montenegro to seek his fortune first in Europe and then in America. Milovan will be the protagonist of this journey but also the narrator, training his son Vladimir (Arianna's future father) in the art of storytelling. At twelve, following the German and Italian occupation, he joins Tito's partisan forces to follow his personal God, his brother Mihailo. Vladimir's arm will be amputated in a grenade explosion, but at the end of the war he will rediscover love and discover poetry, of which he will become a splendid interpreter. In socialist Yugoslavia, with its rituals and eccentricities, Vladimir's firstborn, Arianna, is born. And the love between the poet father and his bookish daughter will be boundless, fun, and full of magic. As she grows up, Arianna falls in love with a young architect, the son of a counterintelligence general. It is thanks to his investigations that Arianna will uncover a terrible secret that her father has kept from her..