Traces the life of a young Roman woman from her girlhood through her shooting, in her 20s, of a young Milanese Marxist and her mother's financial adviser, both of whom have made sexual attacks on her. The young woman, appropriately named Desideria, passes as the daughter of the wealthy Viola (the name means violet but here implies violated), who is "of Italian parentage but American by birth and upbringing. " Moravia emphasizes this "two-sided" quality, as the translator unluckily renders it, telling us in Davidson's English that Viola "was different when seen from the front or the back" -- old and wasted in front, young, "graceful, sensual, provoking" from the rear. She is also placed between the past, as the widow of a Greek husband, and the present, as the holder of an American passport. And she acts two roles, as Desideria's apparent mother and her incestuous lover.