In these pages we will meet Leni, assures us the enigmatic, anonymous narrator of the book, who has taken on the task of reconstructing her biography through the various testimonies of the people who knew her. But who is Leni? A simple woman, without any ambition for heroism, who grew up during the rise of Nazism in Germany, who lived through the war and survived it, and now, in the democratic post-war West Germany of the '60s, experiences the aftermath of an era that is perhaps not as distant as it seems.

In "Group Portrait with Lady", a masterpiece of modernism, the "crown jewel of Heinrich Böll's creation", according to the wording of the committee that awarded him the Nobel Prize in 1972, the destinies and choices of a nation in crisis are depicted with precision and sarcasm, with apparent naivety and yet astonishing depth. Each "testimony" illuminates not only Leni's life but also that of each member of the chorus surrounding her in the "group portrait", the sensuality, baseness, and greatness of human nature. And unexpectedly, almost magically, we see another portrait emerge: the mosaic of an entire continent - the portrait of our Europe.