Severin von Kusiemski is obsessed with the Greek goddess of love, and is consumed by the desire to be dominated. When he meets his voluptuous neighbor, Wanda von Dunajew, he is enthralled, and convinces her to enter into a contract: she is to be his Mistress, he will be her slave. So they travel from the harsh Carpathian slopes to verdant Italy, where Severin's once-reluctant Mistress embraces her power with an icy fervour, testing her slave's devotion to breaking point. This otherworldly study of dominance, lust and submission broke new ground in literature and continues to challenge our learned conventions of love and sexuality.