How many women can one woman be? How many names can she have? And how many lives? Eva is twelve years old when her younger sister Sara drowns. Subsequently, Eva's parents erase every trace of Sara's existence – they will never even utter her name again – and in reaction, Eva goes from muteness to refusing to eat. As a teenager, thanks to a school project, she unexpectedly travels to Cardiff, from where she will return home only fifteen years later, at thirty, with the precise purpose of gathering information about her sister and thus reconstructing her existence.
In these fifteen years, Eva has forgotten herself, becoming Nicky in Cardiff, Blu in Paris, Viola in Berlin, Dora in Palermo, Lili in Bologna, Nives in Barcelona… In every city she lands in, she is a different woman, but she carries with her each time the entire array of characters that inhabit her as she tries to escape her Hydra. In Berlin, she will meet Lupo, the son of a community of hippies. Lupo is also a runaway: he has left his community, his parents, and every form of ordinary existence, becoming a circus performer. Lupo will introduce Eva to the 'family' that makes up his circus, charting a new path for Eva at the end of which she may perhaps discover her true name, her secret name.