"One of contemporary fiction''s most gifted sentence builders" Beejay Silcox, Guardian
Behind the ornate doors of 30, rue du M-l in Brussels, twenty students begin their apprenticeship in the art of decorative painting - that art of tricksters and counterfeiters, where each knot in a plank of wood hides a secret and every vein in a slab of marble tells a story.
Among these students are Kate, Jonas and Paula Karst. Together, during a relentless year of study, they will learn the techniques of reproducing materials in paint, and the intensity of their experience - the long hours in the studio, the late nights, the conversations, arguments, parties, romances - will cement a friendship that lasts long after their formal studies end.
For Paula, her initiation into the art of trompe l''-il will take her back through time, from her own childhood memories, to the ancient formations of the materials whose depiction she strives to master. And from the
