Kingsley (Cat) Fisher is an Australian woman, born at the beginning of the 20th century, with a madness for literature. When she is injured in a terrible accident while reading, Cat finds that her powers as a reader are almost supernaturally enhanced. Over the next hundred years, her life is entwined with the lives and legends of the greatest writers of the time -- James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Hemingway, Kerouac, Sylvia Plath, Patrick White and a host of others. Cat is their secret confidante, first reader and muse; the hidden constant in their very different literary quests. And for one of them she becomes much more, when a question is asked which only Cat can answer. Cat's adventures take her around the world and back a