De Moor has built her latest novel around the Kreutzersonate by the Czech composer, Leos Janácek, who, in turn, based his string quartet on the novel of the same name by Leo Tolstoy. In Tolstoy's story, a man and a woman are playing the sonata Ludwig van Beethoven composed for the French violinist and composer Rudolphe Kreutzer. The two fall in love as they play, which poisons the husband's mind with jealousy, so that he kills his wife.