'A panoramic, passionately feminist examination of the changing shape of Western civilisation since the Age of Enlightenment. Sontag's book is a sweeping, exquisitely detailed picture of Europe in the final decades of the eighteenth century.' Chicago Sun-Times 'The Volcano Lover seems a novel Susan Sontag was destined to write, a shift from the moral intelligence of the essayist to the intelligent heart of the novelist.' The Nation