A Dutch writer sets up home in the Grand-Hotel Europa, a palace of dilapidated splendor.

He has just broken up with his great love, Clio, a passionate art historian, and wants to put their tumultuous history down on paper. If writing is a remedy for his desolation, so are the hotel's other guests and staff.

There's Abdul, the bellboy, rescued from a shipwreck in the Mediterranean; Mr. Montebello, the butler, nostalgic for a sumptuous past; a Cretan shipowner; a French poetess and, above all, Mr. Wang, the new Chinese owner, determined to make the place attractive to his fellow creatures...

Available on Audible