Marina Warner’s 'Pentimento' is written in response to Paula Rego’s drawing in pencil and conte, 'St Mary of Egypt' (2011) and tells the story of the little-known saint from fragments of reports of those who knew and remembered her. Knowing Rego’s love of storytelling and character studies, Warner has written a fictional account of a professor who has discovered Rego’s drawing and has pieced together memories of the saint gathered from a fictional fourth-century palimpsest she is researching from the city of Fustat (old Cairo).