Richard Vaisey is a respected scholar specialising in Russian studies when Anna Danilova arrives on campus. A visiting Russian poet with a mission more than literary, Anna challenges his integrity–and his marriage. Richard’s beautiful but unspeakably monstrous wife, Cordelia, seeks revenge on her adulterous husband, determined to ruin him by canceling his credit cards and reporting his car as stolen to the police. But Richard must face even further humiliating consequences, for the seductive Anna is also an irremediably bad poet.