The most beautiful and widely read novella by Franz Werfel, Vienna 1936: Leonidas looks back on his life with pride. Coming from humble beginnings, he has risen to the highest social circles through his marriage to a millionaire heiress and is now the head of a department in the Ministry of Culture. Life could hardly be more beautiful—until one morning he receives a letter written in a pale blue handwriting. It is from his first love, Vera Wormser, the daughter of a Jewish family, with whom he once had a passionate, brief affair. Now, eighteen years later, Vera reaches out to him with an urgent request that pulls the ground from under Leonidas's feet and shakes his well-ordered life...