Eleven short stories are united by the common theme of a woman's journey. Her voyage begins with a repressive childhood in an authoritarian, war-torn society and continues through periods of awakening and self-discovery in which she finds the hidden strength to support herself in new worlds and raise a family. Although the stories are quite different in time and place, in mood and color, there is a thread that connects the main character with each happening, each new encounter, each mishap and each joy. The tales show a woman enamored with the ideal of love yet unable to understand and enjoy sex. It is a woman who adores men but is afraid of their physical power, their superior muscular strength, a woman who had many lovers, not to mention two husbands, but was unable or unwilling to hold on to them.

The extemporaneous existence of Nadine, a bright, complex but naive and trusting young German woman, begins when she heads to England after World War II. She thinks shes leaving home to improve her knowledge of Shakespeares English while working as an au pair in a British household, but instead shes about to learn the ways of the world and become a woman. Nadine goes to England to look after Lipsey and Peter, the two young children of Julie and James Johnson, an English couple in Groomsbridge. While there, she also meets a number of interesting Englishmen of different ages who appreciate her in varying ways consistent with their social class. One of them is Andrew Gibson, a handsome sausage boy, who picks her up at a carnival. She quickly falls for him. Gain new insights into World War II, assiduously recollected by a young German woman who lives abroad. As the reader watches her, she slowly, incessantly steps forth in The extemporaneous Existence of Nadine Tallemann until her development is forcibly interrupted.

The prominent and special role given to eroticism in Thomas Mann's fiction, especially the early stories, and in virtually all of Marguerite Duras's works is examined in the light of visual, tactile, and other stimuli. Sadomasochistic and narcissistic aspects are assessed, and the themes of homosexuality and lesbianism are placed in the wider context of these writers' oeuvres.

Heat Stroke, the first and shortest of three tales, crosses with tongue-in-cheek the sexual barriers of race, age, and culture in a brief and sensual encounter between a young black American and a white European woman. In A Green Beret, the spectacular often-inaccessible landscape of Ethiopia is the unalloyed backdrop for an erotic story filled with fear and tenderness, ending in death for male lover. Two young and beautiful sisters compete for a war hero whose model could have been Agamemnon or Achilles - not in their evanescent shapes as they lived and fought, but as they were caught in white marble by Praxiteles. The magnificent mountain world at the Horn of Africa is the sole empyrean in The Sadist ironically framing an abusive marriage among the upper European classes exiled in Ethiopia. A mansion in Addis Ababa becomes the velvet cage for a young German wife. Surrounded by watchful servants, the attractive, long-limbed woman is kept a prisoner in her luxurious home. There she is ritually caned, raped and psychologically abused by her Armenian husband who was raised to believe that women exist only for the pleasure of men.

A woman aged forty reflects on her life - reaching as far back as memory allows. The writer's sister, her junior by two years, plays a major role in Lovers and Husbands. It soon becomes clear that she is the dazzling protagonist in an endlessly twisting and turning tale. From the beginning, the lives of the two siblings are intricately interwoven. Love, jealousy, envy, loyalty, range, anger and all sorts of imagined and actual fears are tossed together in a big salad bowl the moment the two sisters face a serious event in their multicolored lives. Already as children it becomes apparent that there are considerable differences between them. The older one is physically courageous, if not reckless, and has a quick tongue that often hurts her little sister. The younger child is cautious, reflective and anxious. She is touching in her devotion to her older sister, whose footsteps she follows everywhere. She wants to be loved by her sister, but the older sibling hates to be bothered by her. Only as teenagers, when the older girl realizes how bright and sweet her sister is, do the two of them form a close relationship. They cling to each other when the shouts of their ruthlessly fighting parents ring through the house. Sharing a bedroom, the girls nightly whisper their little secrets to each other. Both teenagers take great comfort in being near each other. Each morning, summer and winter, they ride their bicycles together to their different classes. Talking non-stop, they pedal across a high railroad bridge that leads from the suburbs to the center of town where their school is located. At sixteen they take mandatory ballroom dancing instructions. As soon as the younger sister has caught up with her lessons, they share their dance partners, giving each boy a new name. One moment they giggle together, a habit that enrages their father, the next instant they become serious and plunge into common intellectual endeavors of which their progenitor highly approves. They constantly fall in and out of love not only with male admirers but also with the arts, with literature and music. Learning to sing, the younger sister reveals that she has perfect pitch. Then the older sister leaves their parental home to train as a nurse at a city hospital before she embarks on a sojourn for England. The bodily separation of the siblings creates a rift between them that is never repaired. The younger sister feels betrayed and bitterly resents that her sibling has abandoned her. She must deal by herself with a newly divorced, distraught father and diverse household chores she is unable to take care of properly. In a motherless home only a young brother is left with her. The abyss between the two sisters sharply increases when both of them fall in love with the same man. Not once but twice. By then the older sister has moved to Ethiopia, has married and became the mother of two fine children. When the younger sister visits her sibling at the Horn of Africa, serious and continuing trouble brews between them.