When Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, was 55 years old, he became involved in a romantic triangle with Lou Andreas Salomé, a noted 42-year-old femme fatale, and Victor Tausk, a young and temperamental psychoanalyst-in-training. This novel is about that triangle and the world of psychoanalysis in which it unfolded. It is a biographical novel because, while it is based on actual historical accounts, including the Minutes of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society and the correspondence of Freud and Salome, it is fictionalized. It is fairly accurate and true in its basic plot, but it also uses literary license in order to flesh out the personalities of the characters in the book and dramatize the relationships and dialogues they might have had. The timeline of events has been slightly changed in the hope of bringing to life not only this romantic triangle, but also the whole world of psychoanalysis in Vienna in the early days in which Freud was forging his theories while dealing with a number of intrigues and rifts connected with his rise to fame. It includes a panorama of intriguing psychoanalytic characters, such as Carl Jung, Alfred Adler Melanie Klein, Wilhelm Stekel, Helene Deutsch and Anna Freud. The end result is a volume that makes Freud and psychoanalysis come to life like never before, written by a psychoanalyst who understands that world and gives the novel a stamp of authority.
