A woman descends a staircase. The woman is naked, her body is pale, her pubic hair and her hair are blonde. Against the gray-green background of a staircase and diffuse walls, she presents herself to the observer with a suspended lightness. At the same time, with her long legs, her full, rounded hips, and her firm breasts, she possesses a sensual gravidity. That is the figure that appears in a painting by the highly sought-after painter Karl Schwind. The protagonist and narrator of this novel contemplates him fascinated in a museum. The fascination has a double origin: the work had been missing for decades, and it was also part of the life of the person telling us the story. It's a canvas that connects the present with the past, when he was a young, naive lawyer and was assigned a case that no one at the firm wanted to handle. A case whose center was that painting. It was deteriorated, damaged, and there was a dispute between the owner – the millionaire Peter Gundlach –, the painter and the woman portrayed – Irene Gundlach, the millionaire's young wife –. And the inexperienced lawyer found himself involved in that triangular story in which He was not a mere witness...

With his prodigious ability to narrate the complex in a simple and agile way, to subtly penetrate the most secret corners of the human soul, Bernhard Schlink gives us a subtle and prodigious novel that speaks of love, art, deception, obsession. , possession and loss, pain, the weight of memories and lost opportunities. Of the passions and schemes around a valuable painting that represents a naked woman descending a staircase.

«A novel narrated with an impressive fluidity that tells us about rights and ethics, about great emotions and bitter disappointments» (Südostschweiz).