The Voynich Affair

Summer 1895, Bologna, Italy Lily (Ethel Lilian Boole) is Irish, 31, beautiful, unmarried and lives in London. Her life consists of music, literature, socialising with Socialists, working for Russian and Polish revolutionaries, smuggling books into Russia and her Russian-Polish friend, the anarchist and book-lover Wilfryd Voynich. The years in Russia as a music teacher among the revolutionaries in St. Petersburg and Irkutsk are behind her and an uncertain future lies ahead. Europe is waiting for a Socialist revolution. The new century approaches with great changes for everyone. At a lecture of the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, she meets the mysterious Georgy Rosenblum, a.k.a. Sidney Reilly, of whom the story goes that he is an agent-provocateur for the Ochrana - the Tsarist secret police - or works for Scotland Yard’s Special Branch. Lily is impressed by him but has to try to unmask him. She decides to spend the summer with him in Italy while writing her debut novel. Unaware of the enormous success her book will have well into the twentieth century, she faces a dilemma that will determine the rest of her life. Will she make the right choice and return from Italy unscathed?