Book excerpt: The Sonatas are the Memoirs of the Marquis of Bradomin, a Galician Don Juan. In the Spring Sonata he is a young man in love, full of determination and passion. The object of his affections is a young aristocrat, beautiful and beguiling but destined by her family and her own inclinations to be a bride of Christ. The Marquis's ardour is almost irresistible and the consequences tragic. In the Summer Sonata the Marquis goes to Mexico to forget another unhappy love affair but gets embroiled with a Yucatan princess married to a bandit-king. While the tone of the Spring Sonata is one of virginal innocence, an innocence ultimately betrayed, the Summer Sonata is by contrast one of exotic lushness, redolent of hot days becalmed on silver seas and hot perfumed nights.