The story of a group of people who love and fear the magician who affects all their lives: the ravishing and eccentric young Annette who, after swinging on a chandelier, runs away from her finishing school to enter the School of Life, and learns a good deal more than she bargained for: the fierce and melancholy Rosa, the mistress of two Polish brothers: her brother, editor of a down-at-heel magazine: the scholar, Peter Saward, obsessed by an indecipherable ancient script: Rainborough, a civil servant, struggling in the toils of his secretary. Their lives revolve around the mysterious figure of Mischa Fox, a frightening, yet also touching, figure of power. Each is possessed by some person, idea, illusion or object. Each tries to break the spell, to flee the enchanter. The story moves through a series of episodes which are as vivid and paradoxical as dreams, where the normal suddenly deviates into the sinister, the beautiful into the grotesque.