Do it!' the voice inside him screamed. 'Do it!'
But he hesitated, the razor poised centimetres from her cheek. Her sleeping face was innocent, pure as an angel's.
Now!' screamed the voice. Do it now!
For years, four very different men have met for lunch each Thursday to share their mutual obsession - the telling of stories. Each man takes pride in his ability to entertain the others, while revealing nothing of himself. All agree that Ramon, the blind Argentinian, is the master storyteller among them.
Now, once again, it is Ramon's turn to tell a tale.
His friends settle back, ready to be entertained.
Ramon's story transports them from the bloody political upheavals of Argentina in the seventies, to a tea plantation on the beautiful island of Java, before finally bringing them back to present-day Sydney.
It is the story of a man and a woman, the precious gift the man gives the woman and the consequences of that gift. Ramon swears every word of it is true. Yet the story has dark, sinister undertones.
His audience grows increasingly uneasy as the parallels between the deeply flawed hero of the tale and Ramon himself become ever more apparent.
As Ramon's story reaches its climax, his listeners must face the unbearable fact that this man they have grown to love may, in fact, be a monster.