Envy is an emotion that grows slowly. Thanks to a series or fortuitous encounters and circumstances, a writer and journalist falls victim to an obsessive curiosity about a famous artist: Julian Sax. He would like to meet Sax, but the great painter is surrounded by an almost impenetrable protective screen. The writer's wife, the charming and sensual Rossa, eventually takes him to Tony's, the team room in London where Sax spends a few hours of his day, accompanied by his children, models, and friends. The narrator begins to fear that his wife Rossa might succumb to the charm of this seductive man who attracts women, paints them, and then discards them. In an unpredictable sequence of passions, coups de theatre, and contrasting sentiments, Elkann weaves a fascinating web in which a blend of reality and fiction draws the reader into the lives of characters who will prove hard to forget.