Heligoland

The Nautilus, a strange building shaped like the chambered shell of the same name, was built in South London in the early 1930's. Designed on Modernist and Utopian principles, it was a haven for a floating community of cosmpolitan refugees, intellectuals and artists. Now, at the end of the century, only two of the original inhabitants still occupy their chambers - Celeste Zylberstein, joint architect, with her late husband, of the Nautilus, and Francis Campion, an elderly poet. Gus Crabb, a dealer in bric-a-brac, is the only other resident until, to the Nautilus, like a hermit crab seeking a home, comes Rowena Snow. Of Indian/Scottish parentage, orphaned without family or friends, Rowena is in search of her own Utopia - or the Heligoland of her childhood imagination.