Book Synopsis

The story starts in Smyrna in 1887. Katina is an intelligent and unethical young girl from Smyrne. She lives in a poor neighbourhood, where she meets Attarti, a Turk, who agrees to teach her about magic. After that, no obstacle is big enough, nothing can stand in the way of Katina climbing the social ladder. Love potions, filtres, concoctions and magic prove to be unmistakable. She marries four men. Each richer than the other, each more powerful than the previous one. Climbing the social structure of Smyrna, Katina gets involved with her husbands' businesses and dealings. She manages trade deals, banks tobacco and one day gets to run Smyrna.
Her writings, her potion recipes and her magic filtres were found, by chance, in a dusty case, a hundred years later, in her house in the island of Egina.