By the author of The Magician's Assistant, the Orange Prize runner-up, this novel features the combinatin of opera and terrorism. Latin terrorists storm an international gathering, only to find that their intended target has failed to show up.

Journalist Peter Maguire has been kidnapped in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu. He does not know where he is or what is going to happen to him. As the days go by, his fear is shot through with remorse for the mistakes of his past... Peter's mother Nina comes to Somalia to wait for her son's release. His plight forces her to relive another trauma - the fatal shooting in Liberia of Shaun Ridge, a young photographer she once loved, and Peter's real father......