As he travels a route that takes him from India to Spain, he leaves behind a labyrinthine tale of mad passions and volcanic family hatreds, of titanic matriarchs and their mesmerised offspring, of premature deaths and curses that strike beyond tha grave. The Moor's Last Sigh is a spectacularly ambitious, funny, satirical and compassionate novel. It is a love song to a vanishing world, but also its last hurrah.