"Outside Vallorgàna, a tiny, isolated village in the Dolomites, the 'Duke' lives in the villa of his aristocratic ancestors. The last of the Cimamonte family, he spends his days on his land and absorbed in his archive, tolerated, if gently ridiculed by his neighbours. When he finds out that the village big man is taking timber from his land, he has a decision to make. Will he stay in his glorious isolation, or will he honour his ancestral blood and take action against the affront? Matteo Melchiorre's novel is a sweeping feat of literary imagination.With the pace, panorama and plot twists of a great nineteenth-century classic, the story of the ensuing feud unfolds, and asks some big twenty-first century questions about our relationships with privilege, the past, the natural world and each other"--Page 4 of cover.