New Novel from Orange Prize Nominee, author of A Visit from Voltaire
'I was loved because of this birthmark. Without it perhaps I am unlovable?'
For once, Geneva laser expert Dr Roman Micheli ventures beyond his professional discretion and dares voice the fears of his beautiful new patient, Mira. This virtuoso violinist resists removal of a port-wine stain that prompted her mother to abandon her but led to her adoption by the American Sullivans.
Dr Isabel Hanford, Roman’s English wife, is an ambitious, globe-trotting WHO leprosy expert utterly involved in a crusade to eliminate leprosy from the world, while battling the machinations of shifting priorities of more “fashionable” diseases.
Equally troubling to the surface calm of Roman’s clinic is the arrival of a Japanese man, his skin alive with vivid tattoos reflecting jealousy, loyalty, lust and mischief etched by a Tokyo master. No woman can resist an irezumi, boasts the amiable Shino, leaving Roman wondering why the timetable for his patient’s laser eradication is so very pressing.
The unexpected arrival of Isabel’s ex-boyfriend, now the “Botox King” of New York, threatens to eclipse Roman’s clinic with a trendy chain of laser-beauty spas. What at first seems just a business spat suddenly challenges the very tenets of Roman’s traditional training – with comically appalling results.
Under Their Skin examines how quickly the banal threads of everyday good intentions, differing ethical codes and unexamined complacency can weave together in a fatal net. Both dark satire and moving love story, this novel confirms the author's far-ranging talents.
Read an excerpt from Under Their Skin
Born in Detroit, Dinah Lee Küng worked for twenty years as a reporter in the Far East for The Economist, Business Week, International Herald Tribune and The Washington Post. She now lives in Switzerland with her husband, a veteran of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and their three children.
Her first novel A Visit from Voltaire was long-listed for the Orange Prize 2004.
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