Rudi Vernoff is a young refugee, fleeing Poland with his mother as the Second World War ends and the Russian Army sweeps across Eastern Europe. They find temporary refuge in Austria, where Rudi's beautiful and narcissistic mother finds lonely officers, and a means of survival. Her legacy to Rudi, her classically handsome son, is loneliness and longing, and a desperate need for love, and stability. At seventeen, he finds both in a deeply loving and sensual affair with a young American captain -- and learns that much of the world conspires against such a love. Intrigue forces them apart. Rudi is once more abandoned. But he is wiser now, and aware of the power of his physical beauty. He knows that seduction can bring what he desires most in life: love, beauty, and wealth.
But Rudi is also tormented by visions and by voices. Perhaps of lives he has lived. Perhaps of lives of others who must speak to him. The message of his visions, of a life with purpose and true love, vie with his desperate need for any love, any stability-and the life of deceit that need forces upon him.
Fate brings to Rudi both poverty and riches, loneliness and love, and the understanding that his beautiful body is only a shell that will one day be empty of dreams and of longing; his soul, and a deep and final love, will outlive worlds.