Hana Lee has read more books than any other living person. She speaks nine languages, is fabulously wealthy and – on the downside – has killed somewhere in the region of 250 people. To be fair, however, most of them had it coming.

Concert pianist, nun, English teacher, sex worker, spy – Hana Lee has had such an uncommonly long and varied life that by the summer of 2012, she just wants to get it down on paper and get it over with. In the hope of finding an official biographer, she contacts ex-blogger and failed novelist Lucia Fornaciari and has her believe that she is the reincarnation of a 19th century concert pianist who accidentally killed her husband on the night of their wedding in 1830. In truth, however, Hana Lee's uniquely challenging gift is a great deal more bizarre than mere reincarnation.

Lucia, imagining Hana must be mentally ill, refuses to help her. Instead, feeling confused in a room full of clocks and a chair like an aphrodisiac, she tries to kiss her. It is only when Hana is attacked in south London and her attacker is killed in the process that Lucia agrees to help write the story of Hana's life.

Part contemporary love story, part historical biography, The Lives and Loves of Hana Lee is an extraordinary story of female love, rage and empowerment against the backdrop of two hundred years of male prejudice. By turns explicit, shocking, darkly funny and deeply moving, its cast of characters includes Parisian courtesans, ailing Samurai, sadistic gynaecologists and Sicilian sulphur miners. It also features walk-on parts for Toulouse Lautrec, Frank Sinatra, Ernest Hemingway and Sarah Palin.