In a rediscovered novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Ana Magdalena Bach has been happily married for 27 years, and yet, every August, she travels by ferry to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night takes a new lover.

When Jocelyne, a seamstress in the northern French town of Arras, finds out that she won EU18 million in the lottery, she only has one fear: losing her modest way of life made up of simple pleasures which she cherishes more than anything. But fate can be obstinate, and by renouncing this fortune for too long, Jocelyne triggers a hurricane in her life that changes everything -- everything except her.

"A mesmerizing, psychologically taut novel about a marriage's end and the secrets we all carry. A young woman has agreed with her faithless husband: it's time for them to separate. For the moment it's a private matter, a secret between the two of them. As she begins her new life, she gets word that Christopher has gone missing in a remote region in the rugged south of Greece; she reluctantly agrees to go and search for him, still keeping their split...