The story concerns a young man forging an energetic sexual career in Europe during the early years of the 20th century Berger explores the hearts and minds of both men and women, and what happens during sex to reveal the conditions of the Don Juan's success The text also examines his loneliness, the quiet cumulation in each of his sexual experiences of all those that precede it, the tenderness that infuses even the briefest of his encounters, and the way women experience their own extraordinariness through their moments with him