The novel tells the story of a middle-class UNESCO engineer called Walter Faber who believes
in rational calculated world. Strange events undermine his security - an emergency landing in
a Mexican desert against all odds his friend Joachim hangs himself in the Mexican jungle and
he falls in love with a woman who dies of a concussion he has an incestuous affair. Finally
Faber becomes ill with stomach cancer but it is too late for him to change his life.
