The Marriage Portrait is a heavily fictionalised version of the short life of Lucrezia de' Medici, a sixteenth century member of the renowned aristocratic House of Medici in Italy. As the novel's introductory note explains, she was betrothed to Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara at very young age, and died fairly soon after their marriage, with persistant (though unproven) rumours alleging that she was poisoned. O'Farrell's interest in the subject was spurred on by seeing a surviving portrait of Lucrezia, attributed to Bronzino, and Robert Browning's poem My Last Duchess, which covers the same subject matter.

The English Patient tells the story of four very different individuals who find themselves living together in abandoned villa in Northern Italy in the final months of World War II. Hana, a young Canadian nurse, has stayed behind at the villa (previously used as an improvised hospital) to care for the badly burned titular “English Patient,” who is also suffering from amnesia.