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“What, you think philosophy, you think poetry harmless, sir? Sir, it can maim, it can mutilate, blinded for centuries, it can kill.”
A dark summer, 1816, on the stormy shores of Lake Geneva, a utopia is born. This utopia is one built on free love, on unfettered immorality, on shadowy philosophies built to encase reality, to shield from the consequences of any misdeeds.
Here, in this thundery paradise, shelter the radical poets Bysshe and Byron, accompanied by their respective mistresses, Mary and Claire, and the frustrated physician, Polidori, who joins to shadow his sometime lover and document this sundry menagerie of Shelley’s devotees.
But no paradise can last forever, and a storm is coming.
Upon an inevitable return to England, Bysshe is met with the full weight of what this utopia has cost, and must now learn to reckon with the answer of how far the suffering of others can truly be justified by genius.