In these five tales, the author reveals the power of imagination in our lives. All five -- "The dreamer of Ostend", "Perfect crime", "The healing", "Bad literature", and "Woman with flowers"--Suggest that dreams are the stuff our days are made of. In the first story, a man seeks solace in Ostend, a sleepy town on the North Sea coast to get over the end of a relationship. His landlady tells him her life story, an astonishing account of romantic love and the most outlandish eroticism.