In love with a radical leader, an expatriate must decide whether to put the world before his heart
Thirty miles from the Mediterranean coast, in the lush Syrian heartland, there is a compound known as Kasr-el-Sittat—the Fortress of Holy Women. Built by a deranged cult leader to house his many wives, it was abandoned when the Second World War brought the cult to its knees. Now it has been purchased by a group of European exiles: displaced people whose revenge on the world will come in the shape of a mushroom cloud.

When life in postwar Britain proves unbearable, Eric Amberson returns to Syria, where he spent the war shuffling papers for the British army. There he meets one of the women of Kasr-el-Sittat and falls quickly in love. Elisa Cantemir is a rare beauty, but Eric will find that beneath her elegant exterior is an anarchist who wants nothing more than to plunge the world back into the hell of war.