Howard Ingham finds it strange that no one has written to him since he arrived i
n Tunisia - neither the film director that he is supposed to be meeting in Tunis
, nor his lover in New York who is, he hopes, missing him. While he waits around
at a beach resort, unable to progress on the film script he is there to write,
he starts work on a new novel, about a man living an amoral double life. Howard
also befriends a fellow American who has a taste for Scotch and a suspicious int
erest in the Soviet Union, and a Dane who appears to distrust Arabs intensely.
When bad news finally arrives from home, Howard thinks he may as well stay and
continue writing, despite the tremors in the air of violence, tensions and ambi
guous morals.
