Winner of the 1998 Machado de Assis Award for Best Novel from the National Library of Brazil

In a period of just three days, everything changes for young painter Eduardo “Tato” Simmone, who has never sold a painting. During the funeral for Tato’s renowned mentor, Aníbal Marsotti, Tato meets two people who will determine his fate: a beautiful young woman—a mysterious “vampire”—and a major art dealer. When his studio is ransacked and he is attacked, Tato gets caught up in the intrigue surrounding a stone sculpture by famed Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani. A letter from an Italian art historian he met a year before provides clues about the shadowy origins of the statue, but Tato must untangle for himself the dark threads of other people’s fears. As he works through the mystery, Tato discovers a similarity between viewing a painting and the human heart: closer examination shows there is more to each than originally meets the eye.