. . . in his most far-reaching and scorchingly beautiful novel, [McNally] extends his acute insights into the workings of the mind to the traumas of a besieged city. . . . In Stephen, an artist with a conscience and a man who has lost what is most precious, McNally has created an unflinching witness to humankind's capacity for both evil and transcendent love. And every penetrating thought, harrowing predicament, vivid feeling, and powerfully evoked setting exerts a profound fascination in this lacerating and exquisite novel of crime and war, suffering and sacrifice, revelation and redemption.