This book is composed of three interwoven novellas, the first centred on an ageing art forger; the second on a Portuguese poet, opium addict and collector; the third told by a well-connected doctor, with a cabinet of venom, and an art gallery on the North Queensland coast.
Around these characters circle others, in the contrapuntal manner of the figure suggested by the book’s title. Some are related, some fugitive, some like the essayist Montaigne, the poet Baudelaire or the philosopher Benjamin, enter the story from the past.
