Lord Byron was the most famous, the most scandalous, and most admired man in England early in the 19th century, for love affairs with his boyhood nurse, his half-sister, and numerous married women of aristocracy, not to mention prostitutes, servants, and even homosexuals, but he was also a great poet, satirist, and traveler. After Byron's death in 1824 his memoirs were burned as they were considered too scandalous. 150 years later, this novel's author imagine that he found in Greece an ancient manuscript in Byron's handwriting which could be the long lost memoirs. While this book is an ingenious literary fiction, it remains a vivid and bawdy recreation of Byron's life.