In the eight stories of this collection, we see a steady reworking of the idea of the world as a fallen Eden. Here, in Mozzi's garden, quasi-allegorical characters seek knowledge of something beyond their shaken realities: they have all lost something and react by escaping, retreating from reality into a world, as Mozzi says, that is 'fantastic, mystical, absurd.' The stories are a complicated, unsentimental, yet also heartfelt, exploration of spirituality, love and the act of creation by a master of the short-story form.