Jonas Wergeland has been convicted of the murder of his wife Margrete. What brought Norway's darling to this end? A professor has been set the task of writing a biography of the once celebrated, now notorious, television personality; in doing so he hopes to solve the riddle of Jonas Wergeland's success and downfall. But the sheer volume of material on his subject is so daunting that the professor finds himself completely bogged down, at a loss as how to proceed, until the evening when a mysterious stranger knocks on his door and offers to tell him stories which will help him unravel the strands of Wergeland's life

Third volume of Jan Kjaerstad's award-winning trilogy. Jonas Wergeland has served his sentence for the murder of his wife Margrete. He is a free man again, but will he ever be free of his past?

Interludes of memory and fancy are mixed with a murder investigation in this panoramic vision of contemporary Norway. Jonas Wergeland, a successful TV producer and well-recognized ladies man, returns home to find his wife murdered and his life suddenly splayed open for all to see. As Jonas becomes a detective into his wife's death, the reader also begins to investigate Jonas himself, and the road his life has taken to reach this point, asking "How do the pieces of a life fit together? Do they fit together at all? The life Jonas has built begins to peel away like the layers of an onion, slowly growing smaller. His quest for the killer becomes a quest into himself, his past, and everything that has made him the man he seems to be. Translated into English for the first time, this bestselling Norwegian novel transports and transfixes readers who come along for the ride