Challenge to Venus has its settings in the ancient hill-town of Varenna in Italy in 1957 when the book was first published. Against the background of a closely knit Italian society, into which Fiammeta Alerani was born, it tells the story of her encounter with a visiting Englishman; of their conflict of temperament, tradition and upbringing; of their surrender to each other, and of the diverging loves which are the result of that experience. Fiammeta, like Psyche who was called a rival of Venus, has extreme beauty. In spite of the heat of her blood, it is in her proud nature to believe that...